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THE CAXTONS 




Cije Hol'd lli)tton IH^iition 


THE CAXTONS 



BY 


SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, BART. 



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Evert family is a bistort hi itself, and even a poum to 

IH 06 E WHO KNOW HOW TO SEAROH ITS PAGES. — Lamartxnt. 

Df, PROBO$ MORES DOCILI JUVENT.«, 

Dl, SENECTtTTI PLACID.® QUIETEM, 

BOMDL® G^NTI DATE REMQBE, PROLEMQBE, 


£t DECUS OMNE. 


Horat. Carmen ScBodare. ' 


COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. 


> ■ . 



PHILADELPHIA 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
J878. 


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PREFACE. 


If it be the good fortune of this work to possess 
any interest for the Kovel-reader, that interest, 
perhaps, will be but little derived from the 
customary elements of fiction. The plot is ex- 
tremely slight; the incidents are few, and, with 
the exception of those which involve the fate of 
Vivian, such as may be found in the records of 
ordinary life. 

Regarded as a Kovel, this attempt is an ex- 
periment somewhat apart from the previous works 
of the author; it is the first of his writings in 
which Humor has been employed less for the 
purpose of satire than in illustration of amiable 
characters ; — • it is the first, too, in which man has 
been viewed less in his active relations with the 
world, than in his repose at his own hearth : — :n 
a word, the greater part of the canvass has been 

(V) 


vi 


PREFACE. 


devoted to the completion of a simple Family 
Picture. And thus, in any appeal to the sym- 
pathies of the human heart, the common house- 
hold affections occupy the place of those livelier 
or larger passions which usually (and not iin- 
justly) arrogate the foreground in Romantic 
composition. 

In the Hero whose autobiography connects the 
different characters and events of the work, it has 
been the Author’s intention to imply the influ- 
ences of Home upon the conduct and career of 
youth; and in the ambition which estranges 
PisiSTRATUS for a time from the sedentary occupa- 
tions in which the man of civilised life must 
usually serve his apprenticeship to Fortune or to 
Fame, it is not designed to describe the fever of 
Genius conscious of superior powers and aspiring 
to high destinies, but the natural tendencies of a 
fresh and buoyant mind, rather vigorous than 
contemplative, and in which the desire of action 
is but the symptom of health. 

PisiSTRATUS, in this respect (as he himself feels 
and implies), becomes the specimen or type of a 
class the numbers of which are daily increasing in 
the inevitable progress of modern civilisation. 


PREFACE. 


Vil 


He is one loo many in the midst of the crowd : he 
is the representative of the exuberant energies of 
youth, turning, as with the instinct of nature for 
space and development, from the Old World to 
the Kew. That which may be called the interior 
meaning of the whole is sought to be completed 
by the inference that, whatever our wanderings, 
our happiness will always be found within a 
narrow compass, and amidst the objects more 
immediately within our reach ; but that we are 
seldom sensible of this truth (hackneyed though 
it be in the Schools of all Philosophies) till our 
researches have spread over a wider area. To 
insure the blessing of repose, we require a brisker 
excitement than a few turns up and down our 
room. Content is like that humor in the crystal, 
on which Claudian has lavished the wonder of a 
child and the fancies of a Poet — 


^^Yivis gemma tumescit aquis.' 


E. B.L. 


fiV _ 

Of! : hv/cffo Gift 'td oiU fii yrfftrn oot oao si •:)Jl 

l6 liiK-Joitefi oJJ *^0 

aoi Girriiiit G/it ’i{iivr>n j-siiht lui 

<i1 fihcfV/- b!0 oiti moil ^aO(«qo{GyG&' 

no^GJffr ocij LgH^;> gJ 7^ijai »bFrf7A(?BiiT 

i»oT!>(qfi'fO^> G(f ol3“ffgnQa af slori /T o^fl "io :»nu(SiOsa : . 

(‘<:sjrfJ*fG[>{!isw tiio Tjy&iiidv/ GOfio'jG^af silJ yd 

fi itMtfv/ bfitu/t G(f ar^iv/fxi iliw &coniVrq/;jf ' itro 

e'lom '^dt iftbimu Inw r^r^qisroo wiyrifui" ^ 

mn or/ Sniil )fjd ^ dosi^y ^lao’^ iihi fLyr 

xhtfotlf f:»oyGf!i(G^(l) shrt oidMioci moBfay 

ic/o iii) .(aojHqoaoliiiU Ifjt '1o ftfn.brff>^ Gifi nx 0(1 ii:‘ 

oT jmix •ioBfw jx iwiG'xq^ Gvxiii aGxImyfcfn 

- '-l«r 

iG.i(>ih<l Ji a;// ‘G^-oqoTlo ^uiiif.Gffl Gif) otiiaii? 

wo iiTfot) ^Miii qri exriid ’agI sx auiii hiomJ^hxo J 
J/ueiyiu Gifi iii lOiauxf ixait ai 'ii .>)jioO- ..atoon 
u lo T^baov/ Gxli liGtffiiviil <r4r;{ <r/;U»Lfr.lO ito 

— linVI « )o aoiofux'i oji^ Ban bllih 

‘^8Ufp^^ Jb«9tfiu) BfviV^* 

4 ir .51 . ■'"•■■■'- - 

'»f i,5>t r'. ' .n-ivv-.v-', ,ff. 

...'* s • • - 

/>' V 



THE CAXTONS 


PART FIRST. 


CHAPTER I. 

Sir — sir, it is a boy I ” 

“ A boy,” said my father, looking up from his book, 
and evidently much puzzled ; “ what is a boy ? ” 

Now my father did not mean by that interrogatory to 
challenge philosophical inquiry, nor to demand of the 
honest but unenlightened woman who had just rushed into 
his study, a solution of that mystery, physiological and 
psychological, which has puzzled so many curious sages, 
and lies still involved in the question, “ What is man ?” 
For, as we need not look further than Dr. Johnson’s 
Dictionary to know that a boy is “ a male child” — i. c., 
the male young of man ; so he who would go to the depth 
of things, and know scientifically what is a boy, must be 
able to ascertain “what is a man.” But, for aught I 
know', my father may have been satisfied with Buffou on 
liiat score, or he may have sided with Monboddo Hp 

( 9 ) 


10 


THE CAXTONS : 


may have agreed -vith Bishop Berkeley — he may have 
contented himself with Professor Combe — he may have 
regarded the genus spiritually, like Zeno, or materially, 
like Epicurus. Grant that boy is the male young of man, 
and he would have had plenty of definitions to choose 
from. He might have said, “ Man is a stomach — ergo, 
boy a male young stomach. Man is a brain — ^boy a male 
young brain. Man is a bundle of habits — boy a male 
young bundle of habits. Man is a machine — ^boy a male 
young machine. Man is a tail-less monkey — ^boy a male 
young tail-less monkey. Man is a combination of gases 
— boy a male young combination of gases. Man is an 
appearance — boy a male young appearance,” &c. &c., 
and et cetera, ad infinitum ! And if none of these defi- 
nitions had entirely satisfied my father, I am perfectly 
persuaded that he would never have come to Mrs. Prim- 
mins for a new one. 

But it so happened that my father was at that moment 
engaged in the important consideration whether the Iliad 
was written by one Homer — or was rather a collection 
of sundry ballads, done into Greek by divers hands, and 
finally selected, compiled, and reduced into a whole by a 
Committee of Taste, under that elegant old tyrant Pisis- 
tratus ; and the sudden affirmation “ It is a boy,” did not 
seem to him pertinent to the thread of the discussion. 
Therefore he asked, “What is a boy?” — vaguely, and, 
as it were, taken by surprise. 

“ Lord, sir I ” said Mrs. Primmins, “ what is a boy ? 
Why, the baby I ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


11 


“ The baby 1” repeated my father, rising. “ What, you 
don’t mean to say that Mrs. Caxton is — eh — 

Yes I do,” said Mrs. Primmins, dropping a curtsey ; 
** and as fine a little rogue as ever I set eyes upon.” 

“ Poor dear woman 1” said my father with great com- 
passion. “ So soon, too — so rapidly I” he resumed in a 
tone of musing surprise. “ Why, it is but the other day 
we were married ?” 

“ Bless my heart, sir,” said Mrs. Primmins, much scan- 
dalized, “ it is ten months and more. ” 

** Ten months I ” said my father with a sigh. “ Ten 
months I and I have not finished fifty pages of my refuta- 
tion of Wolfe’s monstrous theory 1 In ten months a 
45hild I — and I’ll be bound complete — hands, feet, eyes, 
3 ars, and nose 1 — and not like this poor Infant of Mind 
(and my father pathetically placed his hand on the 
treatise) of which nothing is formed and shaped — not 
even the first joint of the little finger I Why, my wife is 
a precious woman I Well, keep her quiet. Heaven pre- 
serve her, and send me strength — to support this 
blessing I ” 

^‘But your honor will look at the baby ? — come, sirl” 
and Mrs. Primmins laid hold of my father’s sleeve 
coaxingly. 

“Look at it — to be sure,” said my father kindly; 
“ look at it, certainly ; it is but fair to poor Mrs. Cax- 
ton ; after taking so much trouble, dear soul 1 ” 

Therewith my father, drawing his dressing-robe round 


12 


THE OAXTONS : 


him in more stately folds, followed Mrs. Primmins up* 
stairs into a room very carefully darkened. 

“ How are you, my dear said my father with com- 
passionate tenderness, as he groped his way to the bed. 

A faint voice muttered, “Better now, and so happy 1” 
And, at the same moment, Mrs. Primmins pulled my 
father away, lifted a coverlid from a small cradle, and, 
holding a candle within an inch of an undeveloped nose, 
cried emphatically, “ There — bless it 1 ” 

“ Of course, rna’am, I bless it,” said my father rather 
peevishly. “ It is my duty to bless it ; Bless it I And 
this, then, is the way we come into the world I — red, 
very red, — blushing for all the follies we are destined to 
commit.” 

My father sat down on the nurse^s chair, the women 
grouped round him. He continued to gaze on the con- 
tents of the cradle, and at length said musingly : — “ And 
Homer was once like this I” 

At this moment — and no wonder, considering the pro- 
pinquity of the candle to his visual organs — Homer’s 
infant likeness commenced the first untutored melodies 
of nature. 

“ Homer improved greatly in singing as he grew older,” 
observed Mr. Squills, the accoucheur, who was engaged 
iu some mysteries in a corner of the room. 

My father stopped his ears : — “ Little things can make 
a great noise,” said he philosophically ; “ and the smaller 
the thing, the greater noise it can make.” 

So saving, he crept on tiptoe to the bed, and clasping 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


the pale hand held out to him, whispered some words 
that no doubt charmed and soothed the ear that heard 
them, for the pale hand was suddenly drawn from his 
own and thrown tenderly round his neck; The sound of 
a gentle kiss was heard through the stillness. 

“ Mr. Caxton, sir,” cried Mr. Squills, in rebuke, “you 
agitate my patient — you must retire.” 

My father raised his mild face, looked round apolo- 
getically, brushed his eyes with the back of his hand, 
stole to the door, and vanished. 

“ I think,” said a kind gossip seated at the other side 
of my mother’s bed, “I think, my dear, that Mr. Caxton 
might have shown more joy, — more natural feeling, I 
may say, — at the sight of the baby : and such a baby 1 
But all men are just the same, my dear — brutes — all 
brutes, depend upon it.” 

“ Poor Austin I ” sighed my mother feebly — “ how little 
yon understand him 1 ” 

“And now I shall clear the room,” said Mr. Squills. 
“Go to sleep, Mrs. Caxton.” 

“ Mr. Squills,” exclaimed my mother, and the bed-cur- 
tains trembled, “ pray see that Mr. Caxton does not set 
himself on fire; — and, Mr. Squills, tell him not to be 
vexed and miss me — I shall be down very soon — 
Bha’n’t I ? ” 

“ If you keep yourself easy, you will, ma’am.” 

“ Pray, say so ; -r- an i, Primmins,” — 

“Tes, ma’am.” 

Every one, I fear, is neglecting your master. Be 
L— 2 


14 


THE CAXTONS: 


sure, — (a,iid my mother’s lips approached close to Mrs. 
Primmins’ ear,) — be sure that you — air his night-cap 
yourself.” 

“ Tender creatures those women,” soliloquised Mr. 
Squills, as, after clearing the room of all present, save 
Mrs. Primmins and the nurse, he took his way towards 
my father’s study. Encountering the footman in the 
passage, — “John,” said he, “take supper into your mas- 
ter’s room, and make us some punch, will you ? — stiffish I” 


CHAPTER II. 

“ Mr. Caxton, how on earth did you ever come to 
marry ?” asked Mr. Squills, abruptly, with his feet on the 
hob, while stirring up his punch. 

That was a home question, which many men might 
reasonably resent ; but my father scarcely knew what re- 
sentment was. 

“ Squills,” said he, turning round from his books, and 
laying one finger on the surgeon’s arm confidentially, — 
“Squills,” said he, “I myself should be glad to know 
how I came to be married.” 

Mr. Squils was a jovial good-hearted man — stout, fat, 
and with fine teeth, that made his laugh pleasant to look 
at as well as to hear. Mr. Squills, moreover, was a bit 
of a philosopher in his way ; — studied human nature in 
curing its diseases; — and was accustomed to say. that 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


15 


Mr. Caxton was a better book in himself than all he had 
in his library. Mr. Squills laughed and rubbed his 
hands. 

My father resumed thoughtfully, and in the tone of 
one who moralises : — 

“ There are three great events in life, sir — birth, mar- 
riage, and death. None know how they are born, few 
know how they die. But I suspect that many can ac- 
count for the intermediate phenomenon — I cannot.” 

“ It was not for money, — it must have been for love,” 
observed Mr. Squills ; “ and your young wife is as pretty 
as she is good.” 

“ Ha 1 ” said my father, I remember.” 

/‘Do you, sir?” exclaimed Squills, highly amused. 
“ How was it ? ” 

My father, as was often the case with him, protracted 
nis reply, and then seemed rather to commune with him- 
self than to answer Mr. Squills. 

“The kindest, the best of men,” he murmured — ^^Ahyssus 
Erudilionis: and to think that he bestowed on me the 
only fortune he had to leave, instead of to his own flesh 
and blood, Jack and Kitty. All at least that I could 
grasp deficiente manu, of his Latin, his Greek, his Orien- 
tals. What do I not owe to him I ” 

“ To whom ? ” asked Squills. “ Good Lord, what^s 
the man talking about ? ” 

“Yes, sir,” said my father, rousing himself, “such waa 
Giles Tibbets, M.A., Sol Scientiarum, tutor to the 
humble scholar you address, and father to poor Kitty 


16 


THE CAXTONS: 


He left me his Elzevirs; he left me also his orphan 
daughter.” 

“ Oh I as a wife — ” 

“ No, as a ward. So she came to live in my house. I 
am sure there was no harm in it. But my neighbors said 
there was, and the widow Weltraum told me the girl's 
character would suffer. What could I do ? — Oh yes, I 
recollect all now I I married her, that my old friend’s 
child might have a roof to her head, and come to no 
harm. You see I was forced to do her that injury ; for, 
after all, poor young creature, it was a sad lot for her. 
A dull bookworm like me — cochlecB vitam agens, Mr. 
Squills — leading the life of a snail. But my shell was 
all I could offer to my poor friend’s orphan.” 

“ Mr. Caxton, I honor you,” said Squills emphatic- 
ally, jumping up, and spilling half a tumblerful of scald- 
ing punch over my father’s legs. “ You have a heart, 
sir; and I understand why your wife loves you. You 
seem a cold man ; but you have tears in your eyes at this 
moment.” 

“ I dare say I have,” said my father, rubbing his shins : 
it was boiling 1 ” 

Q ^‘And your son will be a comfort to you both,” said 
j^Mr. Squills, reseating himself, and, in his friendly emo- 
tion, wholly abstracted from all consciousness of the suf- 
fering he had inflicted. “ He will be a dove of peace to 
your ark.” 

” I don’t doubt it,” said my father ruefully ; “ only 
those doves, when they are small, are a very noisy sort 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 17 

of birds — non talium avium cantus somnum reducent 
However, it might have been worse. Leda had twins.” 

^‘So had Mrs. Barnabas last week,” rejoined the ac- 
coucheur. “Who knows what maybe in store for you 
yet ? Here’s a health to Master Caxton, and lots of bro- 
thers and sisters to him 1 ” 

“Brothers and sisters! I am sure Mrs. Caxton will 
never think of such a thing, sir,” said my father almost 
indignantly “ She’s much too good a wife to behave so. 
Once, in a way, it is all very well ; but twice — and as it 
is, not a paper in its place, nor a pen mended the last 
three days : I, too, who can only write *cuspide durius- 
culd ’ — and the baker coming twice to me for his bill, too I 
The Ilithyiae are troublesome deities, Mr. Squills.” 

“ Who are the Ilithyiae ?” asked the accoucheur. 

“You ought to know,” answered my father smiling. 
“ The female daemons who presided over the Neogilos or 
New-born. They take their name from Juno. See 
Homer, book XI. By the bye, will my Neogilos be 
brought up like Hector or Astyanax — videlicet^ nourished 
by its mother or by a nurse ? ” 

“ Which do you prefer, Mr. Caxton ? ” asked Mr. 
Squills, breaking the sugar in his tumbler. “ In this I 
always deem it my duty to consult the wishes of the gen- 
tluman.” 

“A nurse by all means, then,” said my father. “And 
let her carry him upo kolpo, next to her bosom. I know 
all that has been said about mothers nursing their own 
jjifants, Mr. Squills ; but poor Kitty is so sensitive, that 1 


18 


THE CAXTONS: 


think a stout healthy peasant woman will be the best foi 
the boy^s future nerves, and his mother’s nerves, present 
and future, too. Heigh-ho I — I shall miss the dear 
woman very much ; when will she be up, Mr. Squills ? ” 

“ Oh, in less than a fortnight I ” 

“And then the Neogilos shall go to school I upc holpo 
— the' nurse with him, and all will be right again, ’ said 
my father, with a look of sly mysterious humor, which 
was peculiar to him. 

“ School I when he’s just born ? ” 

Can’t begin too soon,” said my father positively; 
“ that’s Helvetius’ opinion, and it is mine too 1 ” 


CHAPTER III. 

That I was a very wonderful child, I take for granted ; 
but, nevertheless, it was not of my own knowledge that 
I came into possession of the circumstances set down in 
my former chapters. But my father’s conduct on the oc- 
casion of my birth made a notable impression upon ail 
who witnessed it ; and Mr. Squills and Mrs. Primming 
have related the facts to me sufficiently often to make me 
as well acquainted with them as those worthy witnesses 
themselves. I fancy I see my father before me, in his 
dark-grey dressing. gown, and with his odd, half sly, half 
innocent twitch of the mouth, and peculiar puzzling look, 
from two quiet, abstracted, indolently handsome eyes, at 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


19 


the moment he agreed with Helvetius on the propriety of 
sending me to school as soon as I was corn. Nobody 
knew exactly what to make of my father — his wife ex 
ccpted. The people of Abdera sent for Hippocrates to 
cure the supposed insanity of Democritus, “ who at that 
time,” saith Hippocrates drily, “ was seriously engaged in 
philosophy.” That same people of Abdera would cer- 
tainly have found very alarming symptoms of madness in 
my poor father ; for, like Democritus, “ he esteemed as 
nothing the things, great or small, in which the rest of 
the world were employed.” Accordingly, some set him 
down as a sage, some as a fool. The neighboring clergy 
respected him as a scholar, “breathing libraries;” the 
ladies despised him as an absent pedant, who had no more 
gallantry than a stock or a stone. The poor loved him 
for his charities, but laughed at him as a weak sort of 
man, easily taken in. Yet the squires and farmers found 
that, in their own matters of rural business, he had always 
a fund of curious information to impart ; and whoever, 
young or old, gentle or simple, learned or ignorant, asked 
his advice, it was given with not more humility than wis- 
dom. In the common affairs of life, he seemed incapable 
of acting for himself; he left all to my mother; or, if 
taken unawares, was pretty sure to be the dupe. But in 
those very affairs — if another consulted him — his eye 
brightened, his brow cleared, the desire of serving made 
him a new being: cautious, profound, practical. Too 
lazy or too languid where only his own interests were at 
stake — touch his benevolence, and all the wheels of the 


20 


THE OAXTONS: 


slock-work felt the impetus of the master-spring. No 
wonder that, to others, the nut of such a character was 
hard to crack I But, in the eyes of my poor mother, Au- 
gustine (familiarly Austin) Caxton was the best and the 
greatest of human beings ; and she ought to have known 
aim well, for she studied him with her whole heart, knew 
every trick of his face, and, nine times out of ten, divined 
what he was going to say, before he opened his lips. Yet 
certainly there were deeps in his nature which the plum- 
met of her tender woman’s wit had never sounded ; and, 
certainly, it sometimes happened that, even in his most 
domestic colloquialisms, my mother was in doubt whether 
he was the simple straightforward person he was mostly 
taken for. There was, indeed, a kind of suppressed, 
subtle irony about him, too unsubstantial to be popularly 
called humor, but dimly implying some sort of jest, which 
he kept all to himself ; and this was only noticeable when 
he said something that sounded very grave, or appeared 
to the grave very silly and irrational. 

That I did not go to school — at least to what Mr. 
Squills understood by the word school — quite so soon as 
intended, I need scarcely observe. In fact, my mother 
managed so well — my nursery, by means of double doors, 
was so placed out of hearing — that my father, for the 
most part, was privileged, if he pleased, to forget my ex- 
istence. He was once vaguely recalled to it on the occa- 
sion of my christening. Now, my father was a shy man, 
and he particularly hated all ceremonies and public spec- 
f.acles. He became uneasily aware that a great ceremony, 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


21 


in which he might be called upon to play a prominent 
part, was at hand. Abstracted as he was, and conveni- 
ently deaf at times, he had heard such significant whis- 
pers about “ taking advantage of the bishop’s being in 
the neighborhood,” and “ twelve new jelly-glasses being 
absolutely wanted,” as to assure him that some deadly 
festivity was in the wind. And when the question of god- 
mother and godfather was fairly put to him, coupled with 
the remark that this was a fine opportunity to return the 
civilities of the neighborhood, he felt that a strong effort 
at escape was the only thing left. Accordingly, having, 
seemingly without listening, heard the day fixed, and seen, 
as they thought, without observing, the chintz chairs in 
the best drawing-room uncovered (my dear mother was 
the tidiest woman in the world), my father suddenly dis- 
covered that there was to be a great book-sale, twenty 
miles off, which would last four days, and attend it he 
must. My mother sighed ; but she never contradicted 
my father, even when he was wrong, as he certainly was 
in this case. She only dropped a timid intimation that 
she feared “ it would look odd, and the world might mis- 
construe my father’s absence — had not she better put off 
the christening ? ” 

“ My dear,” answered my father, “ it will be my duty, 
by-and-by, to christen the boy — a duty not done in a day. 
At present, I have no doubt that the bishop will do very 
well without me. Let the day stand, or, if you put it 
off, upon my word and honor I believe that the wicked 
auctioneer will put off the book-sale also. Of one tiling 


THE C AXTONS : 


1 am quite sure, that the sale and the christening will 
take place at the same time. ” 

There was no getting over this ; but I am certain my 
dear mother had much less heart than before in uncover- 
ing the chintz chairs in the best drawing-room. Five 
years later this would not have happened. My mother 
would have kissed my father, and said “ Stay,” and he 
would have stayed. But she was then very young and 
timid; and he, wild man, not of the woods, but the 
cloisters, nor yet civilized into the tractabilities of home. 
In short, the post-chaise was ordered and the carpet-bag 
packed. 

“ My love,” said my mother, the night before this He- 
gira, looking up from her work — “my love, there is one 
thing you have quite forgot to settle — I beg pardon for 
disturbing you, but it is important I — baby’s name ; 
shan’t we call him Augustine ? ” 

“Augustine,” said my father, dreamily; “why, that 
name’s mine.” 

“And you would like your boy’s to be the same ? ” 
“No,” said my father, rousing himself. “Nobody 
would know which was which. I should catch myself 
learning the Latin accidence or playing at marbles. I 
should never know my own identity, and Mrs. Primmins 
would be giving me pap. ” 

My mother smiled ; and putting her hand, which was 
a very pretty one, on my father’s shoulder, and looking 
at him tenderly, she said, “ There’s no fear of mistaking 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


23 


you for any other, even your son, dearest. Still, if you 
prefer another name, what shall it be ? ” 

Samuel,” said my father. ** Dr. Parr’s name is 
Samuel.” 

La, my love I Samuel is the ugliest name — ” 

My father did not hear the exclamation, he was again 
deep in his books ; presently he started up : — “ Barnes 
says Homer is Solomon. Read Omeros backwards, in 
the Hebrew manner — ” 

“Yes, my love,” interrupted my mother. “ But baby’s 
Christian name ? ” 

“ Omeros — Soremo — Solemo — Solomo I ” 

“ Solomo 1 shocking,” said my mother. 

“ Shocking, indeed,” echoed my father ; “ an outrage 
to common sense.” Then, after glancing again over his 
books, he broke out musingly — “ But, after all, it is non- 
sense to suppose that Homer was not settled till his 
time.” 

“ Whose ? ” asked my mother mechanically. 

My father lifted up his finger. 

My mother continued, after a short pause, “ Arthur is 
a pretty name. Then there’s William — Henry — Charles 
—Robert. What shall it be, love ?” 

“ Pisistratus ? ” said my father (who had hung fire till 
then), in a tone of contempt — “ Pisistratus, indeed I” 

“ Pisistratus 1 ” a very fine name,” said my mother joy- 
fallj _ » Pisistratus Caxton. Thank you, my love : Pi- 
?'stratus it shall be.” 

“ Do you contradict me ? Do you side with Wolfe and 


24 


THE CAXTONS : 


Heyne, and that pragmatical fellow Yieo ? Do you mean 
to say that the Rhapsodists — ” 

No, indeed,” interrupted my mother. ‘‘ My dear, you 
frighten me.” 

My father sighed, and threw himself back in his chair 
My mother took courage and resumed. 

“ Pisistratus is a long name too I Still one could call 
him Sisty.” 

** Sisty, Yiator,” muttered my father ; “that^s trite I ” 

“No, Sisty by itself — short. Thank you, my dear.” 

Pour days afterwards, on his return from the book- 
sale, to my father’s inexpressible bewilderment, he was 
informed that “ Pisistratus was growing the very image 
of him.” 

When at length the good man was made thoroughly 
aware of the fact, that his son and heir boasted a name 
so memorable in history as that borne by the enslaver of 
Athens, and the disputed arranger of Homer — and it 
was asserted to be a name that he himself had suggested 
— he was as angry as so mild a man could be. “ But 
it’s infamous 1 ” he exclaimed. “ Pisistratus christened I 
Pisistratus I who lived six hundred years before Christ 
was born. Good heavens, madam I you have made me 
tlie father of an Anachronism.” 

My mother burst into tears. But the evil was irreme- 
diable. An anachronism I was, and an anachronism I 
must continue to the end of the chapter. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 




CHAPTER IV. 

“Of course, sir, you will begin soon to educate youi 
son yourself ? ” said Mr. Squills. 

“ Of course, sir,” said my father, “ you have read Mar 
tinus Scriblerus ? ” 

“I don’t understand you, Mr. Caxton.” 

“Then you have not read Martinus Scriblerus, Mr. 
Squills I ” 

“ Consider that I have read it, and what then ? ” 

“Why then. Squills,” said my father familiarly, “you 
would know, that though a scholar is often a fool, he is 
never a fool so supreme, so superlative, as when he is 
defacing the first unsullied page of the human history, 
by entering into it the commonplaces of his own pedantry. 
A scholar, sir — at least one like me — is of all persons 
the most unfit to teach young children. A mother, sir — 
a simple, natural, loving mother — is the infant’s true 
guide to knowledge.” 

“ Egad, Mr. Caxton, in spite of Helvetius, whom you 
quoted the night the boy was born — egad, I believe you 
aie right.” 

“ I am sure of it,” said my father, “ at least as sure as 
a poor mortal can be of anything. I agree with Helve- 

I. — 3 


26 


THE CAXTONS: 


tins, the child should be educated from its birth ; but 
bow ? — there is the rub : send him to school forthwith I 
Certainly, he is at school already with the two great 
teachers, Nature and Love. Observe, that childhood 
and genius have the same master-organ in common — in- 
quisitiveness. Let childhood have its way, and as it 
began where genius begins, it may find what genius finds. 
A certain Greek writer tells us of some man, who, in 
order to save his bees a troublesome flight to Hymettus, 
cut their wings, and placed before them the finest flowers 
he could select. The poor bees made no honey. Now, 
sir, if I were to teach my boy, I should be cutting his 
wings, and giving him the flowers he should find himself. 
Let us leave Nature alone for the present, and Nature^s 
loving proxy, the watchful mother.” 

Therewith my father pointed to his heir sprawling on 
the grass, and plucking daisies on the lawn ; while the 
young mother’s voice rose merrily, laughing at the child’s 
glee. 

“ I shall make but a poor bill out of your nursery, I 
see,” said Mr. Squills. 

Agreeably to these doctrines, strange in so learned a 
father, I thrived and flourished, and learned to spell, and 
make pothooks, under the joint care of my mother and 
Dame Primmins. This last was one of an old race fast 
dying away — the race of old faithful servants — the race 
of old tale -telling nurses. She had reared my mother 
before me : but her affection put out new flowers for the 
new generation. She was a Devonshire woman — and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


27 


Devonshire women, especially those who have passed 
their youth near the seacoast, are generally superstitious. 
She had a wonderful budget of fables. Before I was six 
years old, I was erudite in that primitive literature, in 
which the legends of all nations are traced to a common 
fountain — Puss in Bools, Tom Thumb, Fortunio, For^ 
tunatus. Jack the Giant-Killer, — tales like proverbs, 
equally familiar, under different versions, to the infant 
worshippers of Budh and the hardier children of Thor. 
I may say, without vanity, that in an examination in those 
venerable classics, I could have taken honors 1 

My dear mother had some little misgivings as to the 
solid benefit to be derived from such fantastic erudition, 
and timidly consulted my father thereon. 

My love,” answered my father, in that tone of voice 
which always puzzled even my mother, to be sure whe- 
ther he was in jest or earnest — “in all these fables, cer- 
tain philosophers could easily discover symbolical signifi- 
cations of the highest morality. I have myself written a 
treatise to prove that Puss in Boots is an allegory upon 
the progress of the human understanding, having its 
origin in the mystical schools of the Egyptian priests, 
and evidently an illustration of the worship rendered at 
Thebes and Memphis to those feline quadrupeds, of 
which they makelbdth religious symbols and elaborate 
mummies.” 

“ My dear Austin,” said my mother, opening her blue 
eyes, “you don’t think that Sisty will discover all those 
fine things in Puss in Boots ! ” 


2a 


THE OAXTONS: 


“ My dear Kitty,” answered my father, “ you donH 
think, when you were good enough to take up with me, 
that you found in me all the fine things I have learned 
from books. You knew me only as a harmless creature, 
who was happy enough to please your fancy. By-and-by 
you discovered that I was no worse for all the quarto j 
that have transmigrated into ideas within me — ideas that 
are mysteries even to myself. If Sisty, as you call the 
child, (plague on that unlucky anachronism I which you 
do well to abbreviate into a dissyllable,) if Sisty can’t dis- 
co'rcr all the wisdom of Egypt in Fuss in Boots, what 
theu ? Fuss in Boots is harmless, and it pleases his 
fancy. All that wakes curiosity is wisdom, if innocent — 
all tnat pleases the fancy now, turns hereafter to love or 
to knowledge. And so, my dear, go back to the nursery.” 

Bui I should wrong thee, 0 best of fathers I if I sruf- 
fered the reader to suppose, that because thou didst seem 
BO indifferent to my birth, and so careless as to my early 
teaching, therefore thou wert, at heart, indifferent to thy 
troublesome Neogilos. As I grew older, I became more 
sensibly aware that a father’s eye was upon me. I dis- 
tinctly remember one incident, that seems to me, in look- 
ing back, a crisis in my infant life, as the first tangible 
link between my own heart and that calm great soul. 

My father was seated on the lawn before the house, his 
straw hat over his eyes, (it was summer), and his book 
on his lap. Suddenly a beautiful delf blue-and-white 
flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill of an 
upper story, fell to the ground with a crash, and the frag 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


29 


ments spluttered up round my father’s legs. Sublime in 
his studies as Archimedes in the siege, he continued to 
read; Impavidum ferient ruince ! 

“ Dear, dear ! ” cried my mother, who was at woik in 
the porch, “ my poor flower-pot that I prized so much I 
Who. could have done this ? Primmins, Primmins 1 ” 
Mrs. Primmins popped her head out of the fatal win- 
dow, nodded to the summons, and came down in n, trice, 
pale and breathless. 

“Oh,” said my mother, mournfully, “I would rather 
have lost all the plants in the greenhouse in the great 
blight last May, — I would rather the best tea-set were 
broken I The poor geranium I reared myself, and the 
dear, dear flower-pot which Mr. Caxton bought for me 
my last birth-day I That naughty child must have done 
this I ” 

Mrs. Primmins was dreadfully afraid of my father — 
why, I know not, except that very talkative social persons 
are usually afraid of very silent shy ones. She cast a 
hasty glance at her master, who was beginning to evince 
signs of attention, and cried promptly, “No, ma’am, it 
was not the dear boy, bless his flesh, it was 1 1 ” 

“ you ? how could you be so careless ? and you knew 
bow I prized them both. 0 Primmins I ” 

Primmins began to sob. 

“ Don’t tell fibs, nursey,” said a small shrill voice ; and 
Master Sisty (coming out of the house as bold as brass) 
continued rapidly — “don’t scold Primmins, mamma; it 
was I who pushed out the flower-pot.” 

3* 


30 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ Hush 1 ” said nurse, more frightened than ever, and 
looking aghast towards my father, who had very delibe- 
rately taken off his hat, and was regarding the scene with 
serious eyes wide awake. 

“ Hush 1 And if he did break it, ma’am, it was quite 
an accident ; he was standing so, and he never meant it ; 
pid you, master Sisty ? Speak I (this in a whisper) or 
Pa will be so angry.” 

“Well,” said my mother, “ I suppose it was an acci- 
dent; take care in future, my child. You are sorry, I 
see, to have grieved me. There’s a kiss ; don’t fret.” 

“ No, mamma, you must not kiss me ; I don’t deserve 
it. I pushed out the flower-pot on purpose.” 

“ Ha I and why ? ” said my father, walking up. 

Mrs. Primmins trembled like a leaf. 

‘For fun I” said I, hanging my head — “just to see 
now you’d look, papa ; and that’s the truth of it. Now 
beat me ; do beat me I ” 

My father threw his book fifty yards off, stooped down, 
and caught me to his breast. “ Boy,” he said, “ you have 
done wrong ; you shall repair it by remembering all your 
life that your father blessed God for giving him a son who 
spoke truth in spite of fear I Oh I Mrs. Primmins, the 
next fable of this kind you try to teach him, and we part 
for ever I ” 

From that time I first date the hour when I felt that I 
loved my father, and knew that he loved me ; from that 
time, too, he began to converse with me. He would nc 
longer, if he met me in the garden, pass by with a smile 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


31 


and nod ; he would stop, put his book in his pocket, and 
though his talk was often above my comprehension, still 
somehow I felt happier and better, and less of an infant, 
when I thought over it, and tried to puzzle out the mean- 
ing; for he had a way of suggesting, not teaching — put- 
ting things into my head, and then leaving them to work 
out their own problems. I remember a special instance 
with respect to that same flower-pot and geranium. Mr. 
Squills, who was a bachelor, and well to do in the world, 
often made me little presents. Not long after the event 
I have narrated, he gave me one far exceeding in value 
those usually bestowed on children, — it was a beautiful 
large domino-box in cut ivory, painted and gilt. This 
domino-box was my delight. I was never weary of play- 
ing at dominoes with Mrs. Primmins, and I slept with the 
box under my pillow. 

*"Ah I ” said my father one day, when he found me 
ranging the ivory parallelograms in the parlor, ah I you 
like that better than all your playthings, eh ? ” 

“ O yes, papa. 

*^You would be very sorry if your mamma were to 
throw that box out of the window, and break it for fun.” 
I looked beseechingly at my father, and made no answei 

“But perhaps you would be very glad,” he resumed. 
“ if suddenly one of those good fairies you read of could 
change the domino-box into a beautifur geranium in a 
beautiful blue-and-white flower-pot, and you could have 
the pleasure of putting it on your mamma’s window-sill.” 

“ Indeed I would I ” said I, half crying. 


8 ^ 


tHE CAXTONS: 


“ My dear boy, I belieye you ; but good wishes douH 
mend bad actions — good actions mend bad actions.” 

So saying, he shut the door and went out. I cannot 
tell you how puzzled I was to make out what my father 
meant by his aphorism. But I know that I played at 
dominoes no more that day. The hext morning my father 
found me seated by myself under a tree in the garden ; 
he paused and looked at me with his grave bright eyes 
very steadily. 

“ My boy,” said he, I am going to walk to — — (a 
town about two miles off), will you come ? and, by the 
bye, fetch your domino-box : I should like to show it to 
a person there.” I ran in for the box, and, not a little 
proud of walking with my father upon the high-road, we 
set out. 

*‘Papa,” said I by the way, “there are no fairies 
now.” 

“ What then, my child ? ” 

“ Why — ^how then can my domino-box be changed into 
a geranium and blue-and- white flower-pot ? ” 

“ My dear,” said my father, leaning his hand on my 
shoulder, “ everybody who is in earnest to be good car- 
ries two fairies about with him — one here,” and he 
touched my heart; “and one here,” and he touched my 
forehead. 

“ I donT understand, papa.^^ 

“ I can wait till you do, Pisistratus 1 What a name I 

My father stopped at a nursery garden er^s, and, after 
looking over the flowers, paused before a large double 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


33 


geranium. “Ah, this is finer than that which your 
mamma was so fond of. What is the cost, sir ? 

“ Only 7s. 6d.,’’ said the gardener. 

My father buttoned up his pocket “I can’t afford it 
to-day,” said he, gently, and we walked out. 

On entering the town, we stopped again at a china- 
warehouse. “ Have you a flower-pot like that I bought 
some months ago ? Ah, here is one, marked 3s. fid. 
Yes, that is the price. Well, when your mamma’s birth- 
day comes again, we must buy her another. That is 
some months to wait. And we can wait. Master Sisty. 
For truth, that blooms all the year round, is better than 
a poor geranium ; and a word that is never broken is 
better than a piece of delf.” 

My head, which had drooped before, rose again ; but 
the rush of joy at my heart almost stifled me. 

“ I have called to pay your little bill,” said my father, 
entering the shop of one of those fancy stationers com- 
mon in country towns, and who sell all kinds of pretty 
toys and nick-nacks. “And by the way,” he added, as 
file smiling shopman looked over his books for the entry, 
“ I think my little boy here can show you a much hand- 
somer specimen of French workmanship that that work- 
box which you enticed Mrs. Caxton into rafiling for, last 
winter. Show your domino-box, my dear.” 

I produced my treasure, and the shopman was liberal 
in his commendations. “ It is always well, my boy, to 
know what a thing is worth, in case one wishes to part 


0 


84 


THE CAXTONS: 


with it. If my young gentleman gets tired of his play- 
thing, what will you give him for it ? 

“Why, sir,” said the shopman, “I fear we could not 
afford to give more than eighteen shillings for it, unless 
the young gentleman took some of these pretty things in 
exchange I ” 

“Eighteen shillings!” said my father; “you would 
give that sum. Well, my boy, whenever you do grow 
tired of your box, you have my leave to sell it.” 

My father paicj his bill and went out. I lingered be- 
hind a few moments, and joined him at the end of the 
street. 

“ Papa, papa I ” I cried, clapping my hands, “ we can 
buy the geranium — we can buy the flower-pot.” And I 
pulled a handful of silver from my pockets. 

“ Did I not say right ? ” said my father, passing his 
handkerchief over his eyes — “You have found the two 
fairies 1 ” 

Oh ! how proud, how overjoyed I was, when, after 
placing vase and flower on the window-sill, I plucked 
my mother by the gown, and made her follow me to the 
spot. 

“ It is his doing, and his money I ” said my father ; 
“good actions have mended the bad.” 

“ What ! ” cried my mother, when she had learned all ; 
and your poor domino-box that you were so fond of! 
We will go back to-morrow, and buy it back, if it costs 
us double.” 

“ Shall we buy it back, Pisistratus ? ” asked my father 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


85 


Oh no — no — no 1 It would spoil all,” I cried, bury- 
ing my face on my father’s breast. 

'^My wife,” said my father, solemnly, ^‘this is my first 
lesson to our child — the sanctity and the happiness of 
self-sacrifice — undo not what it should teach to his dying 
day.” 


CHAPTER V. 

When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, 
a change came over me, which may perhaps be familiar 
to the notice of those parents who boast the anxious 
blessing of an only child. The ordinary vivacity of child- 
hood forsook me ; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful. 
The absence of playfellows of my own age, the com- 
panionship of mature minds, alternated only by complete 
solitude, gave something precocious, whether to my 
imagination or my reason. The wild fables muttered to 
me by the old nurse in the summer twilight, or over the 
winter’s hearth — the effort made by my struggling intel- 
lect to comprehend the grave, sweet wisdom of my father’s 
suggested lessons — tended to feed a passion for reverie, 
in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as in the 
dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking. I had 
learned to read with ease, and to write with some fluency, 
and I already began to imitate, to reproduce. Strange 
tales, akin to those I had gleaned from fairy-land — rude 


36 


THE C AXTONS : 


sonj^s, modfjlled from such verse-books as fell into my 
hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages, 
designed for the less ambitious purposes of round text 
and multiplication. My mind was yet more disturbed by 
the intensity of my home affections. My love for both 
my parents had in it something morbid and painful. I 
often wept to think how little I could do for those I loved 
so well. My fondest fancies built up imaginary difficulties 
for them, which my arm was to smoothe. These feelings, 
thus cherished, made my nerves ov^r^usceptible and acute. 
Nature began to affect me powerfully ; and from that 
affection rose a restless curiosity to analyze the charms 
that so mysteriously moved me to joy or awe, to smiles or 
tears. I got my father to explain to me the elements of 
astronomy ; I extracted from Squills, who was an ardent 
botanist, some of the mysteries in the life of flowers. 
But music became my darling passion. My mother 
(though the daughter of a great scholar — a scholar at 
whose name my father raised his hat if it happened to be 
on his head) possessed, I must own it fairly, less book- 
learning than many an humble tradesman's daughter can 
boast in this more enlightened generation ; but she had 
some natural gifts which had ripened. Heaven knows how I 
into womanly accomplishments. She drew with some 
elegance, and painted flowers to exquisite perfection. She 
played on more than one instrument with more than 
boarding-school skill ; and though she sang in no language 
but her own, few could hear her sweet voice without being 
deeply touched. Her music, her songs, had a wondrous 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


31 


effect on me. Thus, altogether, a kind of dreamy yet 
delightful melancholy seized upon my whole being ; &nd 
this was the more remarkable, because contrary to my 
early temperament, which was bold, active, and hilarious. 
The change in my character began to act upon my form. 
From a robust and vigorous infant, I grew into a pal© 
and slender boy. I began to ail and mope. Mr. Squills 
was called in. 

Tonics I ” said Mr. Squills ; “ and don^t let him sit 
over his book. Send him out in the air — make him play. 
Come here, iny boy — these organs are growing too 
large ; ” and Mr. Squills, who was a phrenologist, placed 
his hand on my forehead. “ Gad, sir, here’s an identity 
for you ; and, bless my soul, what a constructiveness 1 ” 
My father pushed aside his papers, and walked to and 
fro the room with his hands behind him ; but he did not 
say a word till Mr. Squills was gone. 

“ My dear,” then said he to my mother, on whose breast 
I was leaning my aching ideality — “ my dear, Pisistratus 
must go to school in good earnest.’’ 

“ Bless me, Austin 1 — at his age ? ” 

“ He is nearly eight years old.^’ 

“But he is so forward.” 

“ It is for that reason he must go to school.” 

“I don’t quite undemtand you, my love. I know he 

is getting past me ; but you who are so clever- 

My father took my mother’s hand — “We can teach 
him nothing now, Kitty. We send him to school to be 

taught ” 

I. — 4 


38 


THE CAXTONS: 


By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you 
do^ ” 

“ By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again, 
said my father, almost sadly. ** My dear, you remember 
that, when our Kentish gardener planted those filbert- 
trees, and when they were in their third year, and you 
began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went 
out one morning, and found he had cut them down to the 
ground. You were vexed, and asked why. What did 
the gardener say ? ‘To prevent their bearing too soon.^ 
There is no want of fruitfulness here — put back the hour 
of produce, that the plant may last.” 

“ Let me go to school,” said I, lifting my languid head, 
and smiling on my father. I understood him at once, 
and it was as if the voice of my life itself answered him. 


CHAPTER VI. 

A YEAR after the resolution thus come to, I was at 
home for the holidays. 

“ I hope,” said my mother, “ that they are doing Sisty 
justice. I do think he is not nearly so quick a child as 
he was before he went to school. I wish you would 
examine him, Austin.” 

“ I have examined him, my dear. It is just as I ex- 
pected ; and I am quite satisfied.” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 

“ What I you really thiuk he has come on ? ” said my 
mother, joyfully. 

“ He does not care a button for botany now,” said Mr. 
Squills. 

“And he used to be so fond of music, dear boy I ” ob- 
served my mother, with a sigh. “ Good gracious, what 
noise is that ? ” 

“Your son’s pop-gun against the window,” said my 
father. “ It is lucky it is only the window ; it would 
have made a less deafening noise, though, if it had been 
Mr. Squills’ head, as it was yesterday morning.” 

“ The left ear,” observed Squills ; “ and a very sharp 
blow it was, too. Yet you are satisfied, Mr. Caxton ?” 

“ Yes ; I think the boy is now as great a blockhead as 
most boys of his age are,” observed my father with great 
complacency. 

“ Dear me, Austin — a great blockhead ? ” 

“ What else did he go to school for ? ” asked my father. 
And observing a certain dismay in the face of his female 
audience, and a certain surprise in that of the male, he 
rose and stood on the hearth, with one hand in his waist- 
coat, as was his wont when about to philosophise in more 
detail than was usual to him. 

“ Mr. Squills,” said he, “ you have had great experience 
in families.” 

•‘As good a practice as any in the county,” said Mr. 
Squills proudly ; “ more than I can manage. I shall 
advertise for a partner.” 

“And,” resumed my father, “you must have observed 


40 


THE OAXTONS: 


almost invariably that, in every family, there is what 
father, mother, uncle, and aunt, pronounce to be one won- 
derful child.” 

“ One at least,” said Mr. Squills, smiling. 

It is easy,” continued my father, “ to say this is pa- 
rental partiality, — but it is not so. Examine that child 
as a stranger, and it will startle yourself. You stand 
amazed at its eager curiosity — its quick comprehension — . 
its ready wit — its delicate perception. Often, too, you 
will find some faculty strikingly developed ; the child 
will have a turn for mechanics, perhaps, and make you n 
model of a steam-boat — or it will have an ear tuned to 
verse, and will write you a poem like that it has got by 
heart from ‘ The Speaker ’ ^ — or it will take to botany 
(like Pisistratus), with the old maid its aunt — or it will 
play a march on its sister’s pianoforte. In short, even 
you. Squills, will declare that it is really a wonderful 
child.” 

“Upon my word,” said Mr. Squills thoughtfully, 
“ there’s a great deal of truth in what you say. Little 
Tom Dobbs is a wonderful child — so is Frank Steping- 
ton — and as for Johnny Styles, I must bring him here 
for you to hear him prattle on Natural History, and see 
how well he handles his pretty little microscope.” 

“ Heaven forbid I ” said my father. “And now let me 
proceed. These Ihaumata, or wonders, last till when, 
Mr. Squills ? — last till the boy goes to school, and then, 
somehow or other, the ihaumata vanish into thin air, like 
ghosts ut the co<;k-crow. A year after the prodigy has 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


41 


been at the academy, father and mother, uncle and aunt, 
plague you no more with his doings and sayings : the 
extraordinary infant has become a very ordinary little 
boy. Is it not so, Mr. Squills ? ” 

Indeed you are right, sir. How did you come to be 

so observant ? you never seem to ” 

** Hush I ” interrupted my father ; and then, looking 
fondly at my mother’s anxious face, he said soothingly,— 
“ Be comforted : this is wisely ordained — and it is for the 
best.” 

It must be the fault of the school,” said my mother, 
shaking her head. 

“It is the necessity of the school, and its virtue, my 
Kate. Let any one of these wonderful children — won- 
derful as you thought Sisty himself— stay at home, and 
you will see its head grow bigger and bigger, and its body 
thinner and thinner — eh, Mr. Squills ? — ^till the mind take 
all nourishment from the frame, and the frame, in turn, 
stint or make sickly the mind. You see that noble oak 
from the window. If the Chinese had brought it up, it 
would have been a tree in miniature at five years old, and 
at a hundred, you would have set it in a flower-pot on 
your table, no bigger than it was at five — a curiosity foi 
its maturity at one age — a show for its diminutiveness at 
the other. No ! the ordeal for talent is school ; restore 
tne stunted mannikin to the growing child, and then let 
the child, if it can, healthily, hardily, naturally, work its 
slow way up into greatness. If greatness be denied it, it 
4 * 


42 


THE CAXTONS. 


will at least be a man, and that is better than to be a little 
Johnny Styles, all its life — an oak in a pill-box.” 

At that moment I rushed into the room, glowing and 
panting health on my cheek — vigor in my limbs — all 
childhood at my heart. “ Oh, mamma, I have got up the 
kite — so high I come and see. Do come, papa.” 

“ Certainly,” said my father; “only don’t cry so loud 
— kites make no noise in rising ; yet, you see how they 
soar above the world. Come, Kate. Where is my hat ? 
Ah — thank you, my boy.” 

“Kitty,” said my father, looking at the kite, which, 
attached by its string to the peg I had stuck into the 
ground, rested calm in the sky, “ never fear but what our 
kite shall fly as high ; only, the human soul has stronger 
instincts to mount upward than a few sheets of paper on 
a frame-work of lath. But, observe, that to prevent its 
being lost in the freedom of space, we must attach it 
lightly to earth; and observe again, my dear, that the 
higher it soars, the more string we must give it ” 


PART SECOND. 


CHAPTER I. 

When I had reached the age of twelve, I had got to 
tne head of the preparatory school to which I had been 
sent. And having thus exhausted all the oxygen of 
learning in that little receiver, my parents looked out for 
a wider range for my inspirations. During the last two 
years in which I had been at school, my love for study 
had returned ; but it was a vigorous, waxeful, undreamy 
love, stimulated by competition, and animated by the 
practical desire to excel. 

My father no longer sought to curb my intellectual 
aspirings. He had too great a reverence for scholarship 
not to wish me to become a scholar if possible ; though 
he more than once said to me somewhat sadly, “ Master 
books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not 
live to read. One slave of the lamp is enough for a 
household . my servitude must not be a hereditary bond- 
age. ” 

My father looked round for a suitable academy ; and 

( 43 ) 


44 


THE OAXTONS: 


the fame of Dr. Herman’s “ Philhellenic Institute” came 
to his ears. 

Now, this Dr. Herman was the son of a German music- 
master, who had settled in England. He had completed 
his own education at the University of Bonn ; but finding 
learning too common a drug in that market to bring the 
high price at which he valued his own, and having some 
theories as to political freedom which attached him to 
England, he resolved upon setting up a school, which he 
designed as an “ Era in the History of the Human Mind.” 
Dr. Herman was one of the earliest of those new-fashioned 
authorities in education, who have, more lately, spread 
pretty numerously amongst us, and would have given, 
perhaps, a dangerous shake to the foundations of our 
great classical seminaries, if those last had not veiy 
wisely, though very cautiously, borrowed some of the 
more sensible principles which lay mixed and adulterated 
amongst the crotchets and chimeras of their innovating 
rivals and assailants. 

Dr. Herman had written a great many learned works 
against every pre-existing method of instruction : that 
which had made the greatest noise was upon the infamous 
fiction of Spelling Books : “ A more lying, roundabout, 
puzzle-headed delusion than that by which we confuse 
the clear instincts of truth in our accursed system cf 
spelling, was never concocted by the father of falsehood ” 
Such was the exordium of this famous treatise. For 
instance, take the monosyllable Cat. What a brazen 
forehead you must have, when you say to an infant, c, A, t 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


45 


—•spell Cat : that is, three sounds forming a totally op- 
posite compound — opposite in every detail, opposite in 
the whole — compose a poor little monosyllable, which, 
if you would but say the simple truth, the child will learn 
to spell merely by looking at it I How can three sounds, 
which run thus to the ear, see — eh — tee, compose the 
sound cat? Don’t they rather compose the sound sec- 
eh-te or ceat^ ? How can a system of education flourish 
that begins with so monstrous a falsehood, which the 
sense of hearing suffices to contradict? No wonder that 
the hornbook is the despair of mothers I ” From this 
instance, the reader will perceive that Dr. Herman, in his 
theory of education, began at the beginning 1 — he took 
the bull fairly by the horns. As for the rest, upon a 
broad principle of eclecticism, he had combined together 
every new patent invention for youthful idea-shooting. 
He had taken his trigger from Hofwyl ; he had bought 
his wadding from Hamilton ; he had got his copper-caps 
from Bell and Lancaster. The youthful idea I he had 
rammed it tight ! — he had rammed it loose I — he had 
rammed it with pictorial illustrations 1 — he had rammed 
it with the monitorial system I — he had rammed it in 
every conceivable way, and with every imaginable ram- 
rod ; but I have mournful doubts whether he shot the 
youthful idea an inch farther than it did under the ola 
mechanism of flint and steel I Nevertheless, as Dr. Her- 
man really did teach a great many things too much 
neglected at schools ; as, besides Latin and Greek, he 
taught a vast variety in that vague infinite now-a-days 


46 


THE C AXTONS : 


called “useflil knowledge;” as he engaged lecturers on 
chemistry, engineering, and natural history ; as arithmetic 
and the elements of physical science were enforced with 
zeal and care ; as all sorts of gymnastics were inter- 
mingled with the sports of the play-ground; — so the 
youthful idea, if it did not go farther, spread its shots in 
a wider direction ; and a boy could not stay there five 
years without learning something, which is more than can 
be said of all schools I He learned at least to use his 
eyes, and his ears, and his limbs ; order, cleanliness, 
exercise, grew into habits ; and the school pleased the 
ladies and satisfied the gentlemen ; in a word, it thrived : 
and Dr. Herman, at the dme I speak of, numbered more 
than one hundred pupils. Now, when the worthy man 
first commenced the task of tuition, he had proclaimed 
the humanest abhorrence to the barbarous system of cor- 
poreal punishment. But, alas I as his school increased 
in numbers, he had proportionately recanted these honor- 
able and anti-birchen ideas. He had, reluctantly, per- 
haps, — honestly, no doubt, but with full determination — 
come to the conclusion that there are secret springs which 
can only be detected by the twigs of the divining rod ; 
and having discovered with what comparative ease the 
whole mechanism of his little government could be carried 
on by the admission of the birch-regulator, so, as he grew 
richer, and lazier, and fatter, the Philhellenic Institute 
spun along as glibly as a top kept in vivacious movement 
by the perpetual application of the lash. 

I believe that the school did not suCTer in reputation 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


47 


from this sad apostasy on the part of the head- master ; 
on the contrary, it seemed more natural and English — 
less outlandish and heretical. And it was at the zenith 
of its renown, when, one bright morning, with all my 
clothes nicely mended, and a large plum-cake in my box, 
I was deposited at its hospitable gates.’ 

Amongst Dr. Herman’s various whimsicalities, there 
was one to which he adhered with more fidelity than to 
the anti-corporeal punishment articles of his creed ; and, 
in fact, it was upon this that he had caused those im- 
posing words, “Philhellenic Institute,” to blaze in gilt 
capitals in front of his academy. He belonged to that 
illustrious class of scholars who are now waging war on 
our popular mythologies, and upsetting all the associa- 
tions which the Etonians and Harrovians connect with 
the household names of ancient history. In a word, he 
sought to restore to scholastic purity the mutilated 
orthography of Greek appellatives. He was extremely 
indignant that little boys should be brought up to con- 
found Zeus with Jupiter, Ares with Mars, Artemis with 
Diana — the Greek deities with the Roman ; and so rigidly 
did he inculcate the doctrine that these two sets of per- 
sonages were to be kept constantly contradistinguished 
from each other, that his cross-examinations kept us in 
eternal confusion. 

“ Yat,” he would exclaim, to some new boy fresh from 
some grammar-school on the Etonian system — “Yat do 
you mean by dranslating Zeus Jupiter ? Is dat amatory, 
irascible, cloud-compelling god of Olympus, vid his eagle 


48 


THE CAXT0N6' 


and his aegis, in the smallest de.gree resembling de grave, 
formal, moral Jupiter Optimus Maximus of the Roman 
Capitol? — a god. Master Simpkins, who would have 
been perfectly shocked at the idea of running after inno- 
cent Friiulein dressed up as a swan or a bull I I put dat 
question to you vonce for all. Master Simpkins.” Master 
Simpkins took care to agree with the Doctor. “And 
how could you,” resumed Dr. Herman majestically, turn- 
ing to some other criminal alumnus — “ how could you 
presume to dranslate de Ares of Homer, sir, by the 
audacious vulgarism Mars? Ares, Master Jones, who 
roared as loud as ten thousand men when he was hurl ; 
or as you vill roar if I catch you calling him Mars again 1 
Ares, who covered seven plectra of ground ; confound 
Ares, the manslayer, with the Mars or Mavors whom de 
Romans stole from de Sabines 1 Mars, de solemn and 
calm protector of Rome ! Master Jones, Master Jones, 
you ought to be ashamed of yourself I” And then wax- 
ing enthusiastic, and warming more and more into Ger- 
man gutturals and pronunciation, the good Doctor would 
lift up his hands, with two great rings on his thumbs, and 
exclaim, — “ Und Du I and dou, Aphrodith ; dou, whose 
bert de seasons velcomed I don, who didst put Atonis 
into a coffer, and den tid durn him into an anemone ; dou 
to be called Venus by dat snivel-nosed little Master Bud- 
derfield! Venus, who presided over Baumgartens and 

funerals, and nasty tinking sewers ! Venus Cloacima 

0 mein Gott ! Come here. Master Budderfield ; 1 must 
flog you for dat ; I must indeed, liddle boy ! ” As our 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


49 


Philhellenic preceptor carried his archaeological purism 
into all Greek proper names, it was not likely that my 
unhappy baptismal name would escape. The first time 
I signed my exercise I wrote ‘‘ Pisistratus Caxton” in my 
best round-hand. And dey call your baba a scholar 1 ” 
said the doctor contemptuously. “Your name, sir, is 
Greek ; and, as Greek, you vill be dood enough to write 
it, vith vat you call an e and an o — p, e, i, s, i, s, t, r, a,- 
T, o, s. Yat can you expect for to come to. Master C ax- 
ton, if you don’t pay de care dat is proper to your own 
dood name — de e, and de o ? Ach I let me see no more 
of your vile corruptions I Mein Gott I Pi I ven de name 
is Pei I ” 

The next time I wrote home to my father, modestly 
implying that I was short of cash, that a trap-bat would 
be acceptable, and that the favorite goddess amongst the 
boys (whether Greek or Roman was very immaterial) was 
Diva Moneta, I felt a glow of classical pride in signing 
myself “your affectionate Peisistratos.” The next post 
brought a sad damper to my scholastic exultation. The 
letter ran thus : — 

“ My Dear Son, — I prefer my old acquaintances Thu- 
cydides and Pisistratus to Thoukudides and Peisistratos. 
Horace is familiar to me, but Horatius is only known to 
me as Codes. iPisistratus can play at trap-ball ; but I 
find no authority in pure Greek to allow me to suppose 
that that game was known to Peisistratos. I should be 
too happy to send you a drachma or so, but I have no 
I. — 5 D 


50 


THE CAXTONS: 


coins in my possession current in Athens at the time 
when Pisistratus was spelt Peisistratos. — Your affection- 
ate father, A. Caxton.” 

Yerily, here indeed was the first practical embarrass- 
ment produced by that melancholy anachronism which my 
father had so prophetically deplored. However, nothirg 
like experience to prove the value of compromise in this 
world I Peisistratos continued to write exercises, and a 
second letter from Pisistratus was followed by thv trap- 
bat. 


CHAPTER II. 

I WAS somewhere about sixteen when, on going home 
for the holidays, I found my mother’s brother settled 
among the household Lares. Uncle Jack, as he was 
familiarly called, was a light-hearted, plausible, enthu- 
siastic, talkative fellow, who had spent three small for- 
tunes in trying to make a large one. 

Uncle Jack was a great speculator ; but in all his spe- 
culations he never affected to think of himself, — it was 
always the good of his fellow-creatures that he had at 
heart, and in this ungrateful world fellow-creatures are 
not to be relied upon ! On coming of age, he inherited 
£6000 from his maternal grandfather. It seemed to him 
then that his fellow-creatures were sadly imposed upon 
by their tailors. Those ninth parts of humanity noto- 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


6 ’ 


riously eked out their fractional existence by asking nine 
times too much for the clothing which civilization, and 
perhaps a change of climate, render more necessary to us 
than to our predecessors, the Piets. Out of pure philan- 
thropy, Uncle Jack started a “ Grand National Benevo- 
lent Clothing Company,’’^ which undertook to supply the 
public with inexpressibles of the best Saxon cloth at Is, 
6d. a pair; coats, superfine, £1 18s, I and waistcoats at 
so much per dozen. They were all to be worked off by 
steam. Thus the rascally tailors were to be put down, 
humanity clad, and the philanthropists rewarded (but 
that was a secondary consideration) with a clear return 
of 30 per cent. In spite of the evident charitableness 
of this Christian design, and the irrefragable calculations 
upon which it was based, this company died a victim to 
the ignorance and unthankfulness of our fellow-creatures. 
And all that remained of Jack’s £6000, was a fifty-fourth 
share in a small steam-engine, a large assortment of 
ready-made pantaloons, and the liabilities of the directors. 

Uncle Jack disappeared, and went on his travels. The 
same spirit of philanthropy which characterised the spe- 
culations of his purse attended the risks of his person. 
Uncle Jack had a natural leaning towards all distressed 
communities : if any tribe, race, or nation was down in 
the world, Uncle Jack threw himself plump into the 
scale to redress the balance. Poles, Greeks (the last 
were then fighting the Turks), Mexicans, Spaniards — 
Uncle Jack thrust his nose into all their squabbles I — 
Heaven forbid I should mock thee, poor Uncle Jack I 


52 


THE CAXTONS: 


for those generous predilections towards the unfortunate ; 
only, whenever a nation is in a misfortune, there is always 
a job going on I The Polish cause, the Greek cause, the 
Mexican cause, and the Spanish cause, are necessarily 
mixed up with loans and subscriptions. These Conti- 
nental patriots, when they take up the sword with one 
hand, generally contrive to thrust the other hand deep 
into their neighbors’ breeches pockets. Uncle Jack 
went to Greece, thence he went to Spain, thence to 
Mexico. No doubt he was of great service to those af- 
flicted populations, for he came back with unanswerable 
proof of their gratitude, in the shape of £3000. Shortly 
after this appeared a prospectus of the “New, Grand, 
National, Benevolent Insurance Company, for the In- 
dustrious Classes.” This invaluable document, after set- 
ting forth the immense benefits to society arising from 
habits of providence, and the introduction of insurance 
companies — proving the infamous rate of premiums ex- 
acted by the existent offices, and their inapplicability to 
the wants of the honest artisan, and declaring that 
nothing but the purest intentions .of benefiting their fel- 
low-creatures, and raising the moral tone of society, had 
led the directors to institute a new society, founded on 
the noblest principles and the most moderate calculations 
— proceeded to demonstrate that twenty-four and a half 
per cent, was the smallest possible return the sharehold- 
ers could anticipate. The company began under the 
fairest auspices : an archbishop was caught as president, 
on the condition always that he should give nothing but 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


53 


his name to the society. Uncle Jack — more eupho- 
niously designated as “the celebrated philanthropist, 
John Jones Tibbets, Esquire” — was honorary secretary^ 
and the capital stated at two millions. But such was 
the obtuseness of the industrious classes, so little did 
they -perceive the benefits of subscribing one-and-nin 3 - 
pence a- week from the age of twenty- one to fifty, in ordei 
to secure to the latter age the annuity of £18, that the 
company dissolved into thin air, and with it dissolved 
Uncle Jack’s £3000. Nothing more was then seen oi 
heard of him for three years. So obscure was his exist- 
ence, that on the death of an aunt who left him a smaK 
farm in Cornwall, it was necessary to advertise that “ If 
John Jones Tibbets, Esq., would apply to Messrs. Blunt 
and Tin, Lothbury, between the hours of ten and four, 
he would hear of something to his advantage.” But, 
even as a conjuror declares that he will call the ace of 
spades, and the ace of spades, that you thought you had 
safely under your foot, turns up on the table — so with 
this advertisement suddenly turned up Uncle Jack. With 
inconceivable satisfaction did the new landowner settle 
himself in his comfortable homestead. The farm, which 
was about two hundred acres, was in the best possible 
condition, and saving one or two chemical preparations, 
which cost Uncle Jack, upon the most scientific prin- 
ciples, thirty acres of buckwheat, the ears of which came 
up, poor things, all spotted and speckled, as if they had 
oeen inoculated with the small-pox. Uncle Jack for the 
ast two years was a thriving man. Unluckily, however, 
5* 


54 


THE OAXTON8: 


one day Uncle Jack discovered a coal-mine in a beautiful 
field of Swedish turnips ; in another week the house w'as 
full of engineers and naturalists, and in another month 
appeared, in my uncle’s best style, much improved by 
practice, a prospectus of the “ Grand National, anti- 
Monopoly Coal Company, instituted on behalf of the 
poor householders of London, and against the Monster 
Monopoly of the London Coal Wharfs. 

vein of the finest coal has been discovered on the 
estates of the celebrated philanthropist, John Jones Tib- 
bets. Esq. This new mine, the Molly Wheal, having 
been satisfactorily tested by that eminent engineer, Giles 
Compass, Esq., promises an inexhaustible field to the 
energies of the benevolent and the wealth of the capital- 
ist. It is calculated that the best coals may be delivered, 
screened, at the mouth of the Thames, for 18s. per load, 
yielding a profit of not less than forty-eight per cent, to 
the shareholders. Shares, £50, to be paid in five instal- 
ments. Capital to be subscribed, one million. For 
shares, early application must be made to Messrs. Blunt 
and Tin, solicitors, Lothbury.” 

Here, then, was something tangible for fellow-creatures 
to go on — there was land, there was a mine, there was 
coal, and there actually came shareholders and capital. 
Uncle Jack was so persuaded that his fortune was now 
to be made, and had, moreover, so great a desire to share 
the glory of ruining the monster monopoly of the London 
wharfs, that he refused a very large offer to dispose of 
the property altogether, remained chief shareholder, and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


55 


remoTed to London, where he set up his carriage, and 
gave dinners to his fellow-directors. For no less than 
three years did this company flourish, having submitted 
the entire direction and working of the mines to that 
eminent engineer, Giles Compass — twenty per cent, was 
paid regularly by that gentleman to the shareholders, 
and the shares were at more than cent, per cent., when 
one bright morning Giles Compass, Esq., unexpectedly 
removed himself to that wider field for genius like his, 
the United States ; and it was discovered that the mine 
had for more than a year run itself into a great pit of 
water, and that Mr. Compass had been paying the share- 
holders out of their own capital. My uncle had the sat- 
isfaction this time of being ruined in very good company ; 
three doctors of divinity, two county members, a Scotch 
lord, and an East India director, were all in the same 
boat — that boat which went down with the coal-mine 
into the great water-pit 1 

It was just after this 'event that Uncle Jack, sanguine 
and light-hearted as ever, suddenly recollected his sister, 
Mrs. Caxton, and not knowing where else to dine, thought 
he would repose his limbs under my father’s trabes citrea, 
which the ingenious W. S. Landor opines should be trans- 
lated ‘‘mahogany.” You never saw a more charming 
man than Uncle Jack. All plump people are more 
popular than thin people. There is something jovial 
and pleasant in the sight of a round face 1 What con- 
spiracy could succeed when its head was a lean and hun- 
gry-looking fellow, like Cassius ? If the Roman patriots 


56 


THE CAX TONS • 


had had Uncle Jack amongst them, perhaps they would 
never have furnished a tragedy to Shakspeare. Uncle 
Jack was as plump as a partridge — not unwieldy, not 
corpulent, not obese, not “ which Cicero objects 

to in an orator — but every crevice comfortably filled up. 
Like the ocean, “ time wrote no wrinkles on his glassy 
(or brassy) brow.” His natural lines were all upward 
curves, his smile most ingratiating, his eye so frank, even 
his trick of rubbing his clean, well-fed, English-looking 
hands, had something about it coaxing, and d^bonnaire, 
something that actually decoyed you into trusting your 
money into hands so prepossessing. Indeed, to him 
might be fully applied the expression — “ Sedem animae 
in extremis digitis habet ; ” “ He had his soul’s seat in 
his finger-ends.” The critics observe that few men have 
ever united in equal perfection the imaginative with the 
scientific faculty. “ Happy he,” exclaims Schiller, “ who 
combines the enthusiast’s warmth with the worldly man’s 
light” — light and warmth, Uncle Jack had them both. 
He was a perfect symphony of bewitching enthusiasm 
and convincing calculation. Nicmopolis in the Achar- 
nenses, in presenting a gentleman called Nicharchus to 
the audience, observes — “ He is small, I confess, but there 
is nothing lost in him ; all is knave that is not fooL” 
Parodying the equivocal compliment, I may say that 
though Uncle Jack was no giant, there was nothing lost 
in him. Whatever was not philanthropy was arithmetic, 
and whatever was not arithmetic was philanthropy. 
He would have been equally dear to Howard and to 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


67 


Cocker. Uncle Jack was comely, too — clear-skinned 
and florid, had a little mouth, with good teeth, wore no 
whiskers, shaved his beard as close as if it were one of 
his grand national companies ; his hair, once somewhat 
sandy, was now rather greyish, which increased the re- 
spectability of his appearance ; and he wore it flat at 
the sides and raised in a peak at the top ; his organs of 
constructiveness and ideality were pronounced by Mr. 
Squills to be prodigious, and those freely developed 
bumps gave great breadth to his forehead. Well-shaped, 
too, was Uncle Jack, about five feet eight, the proper 
height for an active man of business. He wore a black 
coat ; but to make the nap look the fresher, he had given 
it the relief of gilt buttons, on which were wrought a 
small crown and anchor ; at a distance this button looked 
like the king’s button, and gave him the air of one who 
has a place about Court. He always wore a white neck- 
cloth without starch, a frill, and a diamond pin, which 
last furnished him with observations upon certain mines 
of Mexico, which he had a great, but hitherto unsatisfied 
desire of seeing worked by a grand National United 
Britons Company. His waistcoat of a morning was pale 
buff — of an evening, embroidered velvet ; wherewith were 
connected sundry schemes of an “ association for the im- 
provement of native manufactures.” His trousers, ma- 
tutinally, were of the color vulgarly called “blotting- 
paper;” and he never wore boots, which, he said, un- 
fitted a man for exercise, but short drab gaiters and 
uqaare-toed shoes. His watch-chain was garnished with 


58 


THE CAXTONS: 


a vast number, of seals : each seal, indeed, represented 
the device of some defunct company, and they might be 
said to resemble the scalps of the slain, worn by the abo- 
riginal Iroquois — concerning whom, indeed, he had once 
entertained philanthropic designs, compounded of con- 
version to Christianity on the principles of the English 
Episcopal Church, and of an advantageous exchange of 
beaver-skins for bibles, brandy, and gunpowder. 

That Uncle Jack should win my heart was no wonder ; 
my mother’s he had always won from her earliest recol- 
lection of his having persuaded her to let her great doll 
(a present from her godmother) be put up to a raffle for 
the benefit of the chimney-sweepers. ^^So like him — so 
good I ” she would often say pensively ; they paid six- 
pence a-piece for the raffle — twenty tickets, and the doll 
cost £2. Nobody was taken in, and the doll, poor thing 
(it had such blue eyes 1) went for a quarter of its value. 
But Jack said nobody could guess what good the ten 
shillings did to the chimney-sweepers. ” N aturally enough, 
I say, my mother liked Uncle Jack 1 but my father liked 
him quite as well, and that was a strong proof of my 
uncle’s powers of captivation. However, it is noticeable 
that when some retired scholar is once interested in an 
active man of the world, he is more inclined to admire 
him than others are. Sympathy with such a companion 
gratifies at once his curiosity and his indolence ; he can 
travel with him, scheme with him, fight with him, go with 
him through all the adventures of which his own books 
speak so eloquently, and all the time never stir from his 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


59 


easy-chair. My father said that it was like listening to 
Ulysses to hear Uncle Jack I ” Uncle Jack, too, had 
been in Greece and Asia Minor, gone over the site of the 
siege of Troy, ate figs at Marathon, shot hares in the 
Peloponnesus, and drunk three pints of brown stout at 
the top of the Great Pyramid. 

Therefore, Uncle Jack was like a book of reference to 
my father. Verily at times he looked upon him as a book, 
and took him down after dinner as he would a volume of 
Dodwell or Pausanias. In fact, I believe that scholars 
who never move from their cells are not the less an emi- 
nently curious, bustling, active race, rightly understood. 
Even as old Burton saith of himself — Though I live a 
collegiate student, and lead a monastic life, sequestered 
from those tumults and troubles of the world, I hear and 
see what is done abroad, how others run, ride, turmoil, 
and macerate themselves in town and country : ’’ which 
citation suflBceth to show that scholars are naturally the 
most active men of the world, only that while their heads 
plot with Augustus, fight with Julius, sail with Columbus, 
and change the face of the globe with Alexander, Attila, 
or Mahomet, there is a certain mysterious attraction, 
which our improved knowledge of mesmerism will doubt- 
less soon explain to the satisfaction of science, between 
that extremer and antipodal part of the human frame, 
called in the vulgate “the seat of honor,” and the stufied 
leather of an armed chair. Learning somehow or o^her 
sinks down to that part into which it was first driven, 
and produces therein a leaden heaviness and weight, which 


60 


THE CAXTONS : 


counteract those lively emotions of the brain, that might 
otherwise render students too mercurial and agile for the 
safety of established order. I leave this conjecture to 
the consideration of experimentalists in the physics. 

I was still more delighted than my father with Uncle 
Jack. He was full of amusing tricks, could conjure won- 
derfully, make a bunch of keys dance a hornpipe, and if 
ever you gave him half-a-crown, he was sure to turn it 
into a halfpenny. He was only unsuccessful in turning 
my halfpennies into halfcrowns. 

We took long walks together, and in the midst of his 
most diverting conversation my uncle was always an 
observer. He would stop to examine the nature of the 
soil, fill my pockets (not his own) with greart lumps of 
clay, stones, and rubbish, to analyse when he got home, 
by the help of some chemical apparatus he had borrowed 
from Mr. Squills. He would stand an hour at a cottage 
door, admiring the little girls who were straw-platting, 
and then walk into the nearest farm-houses, to suggest 
the feasibility of “a national straw-plat association.’* 
All this fertility of intellect was, alas I wasted in that 
“ingrata terra” into which Uncle Jack had fallen. No 
squire could be persuaded into the belief that his mother- 
stone was pregnant with minerals ; no farmer talked into 
weaving straw-plat into a proprietary association. So, 
even as an ogre, having devastated the surrounding coun- 
try, begins to cast a hungry eye on his own little ones. 
Uncle Jack’s mouth, long defrauded of jucier and more 
legitimate morsels, began to water for a bite of my inno- 
cent father. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


61 


CHAPTER III. 

At this time we were living in what may be called a 
very respectable style for people who made no pretence 
to ostentation. On the skirts of a large village stood a 
square red brick house, about the date of Queen Anne. 
Upon the top of the house was a balustrade ; why, heaven 
knows — for nobody, except our great tom-cat Ralph, 
ever walked upon the leads — but so it was, and so it 
often is in houses from the time of Elizabeth, yea, even 
to that of Victoria. This balustrade was divided by low 
piers, on each of which was placed a round ball. The 
centre of the house was distinguishable by an architrave, 
in the shape of a triangle, under which was a niche, pro- 
bably meant for a figure, but the figure was not forth- 
coming. Below this was the window (encased with carved 
pilasters) of my dear mother’s little sitting-room ; and 
lower still, raised on a flight of six steps, was a very 
handsome-looking door, with a projecting porch. All 
the windows, with smallish panes and largish frames, were 
relieved with stone copings ; — so that the house had an 
air of solidity, and well-to-do-ness about it — nothing 
tricky on the one hand, nothing decayed on the other. 
The house stood a little back from the garden gates, 

1 . —6 


62 


THE OAXTONS: 


which were large, and set between two piers sui mounted 
with vases. Many might object, that in wet weather you 
had to walk some way to your carriage : but we obviated 
that objection by not keeping a carriage. To the right 
of the house the enclosure contained a little lawn, a laurel 
hermitage, a square pond, a modest green-house, and 
half-a-dozen plots of mignonette, heliotrope, roses, pinks, 
sweet-william, &c. To the left spread the kitchen-garden, 
lying screened by espaliers yielding the finest apples in 
the neighborhood, and divided by three winding gravel 
walks, of which the extremest was backed by a wall, 
whereon, as it lay full south, peaches, pears, and necta- 
rines sunned themselves early into well-remembered flavor. 
This walk was appropriated to my father. Book in hand, 
he would, on fine days, pace to and fro, often stopping, 
dear man, to jot down a pencil-note, gesticulate, or solilo- 
quise. And there, when not in his study, my mother 
would be sure to find him. In these deambulations, as 
he called them, he had generally a companion so extra- 
ordinary, that I expect to be met with a hillalu of in- 
credulous contempt when I specify it. Nevertheless I vow 
and protest that it is strictly true, and no invention of an 
exaggerating romancer. It happened one day that my 
mother had coaxed Mr. Caxton to walk with her to 
market. By the way they passed a sward of green, on 
which sundry little boys were engaged upon the lapidation 
of a lame duck. It seemed that the duck was to have 
been taken to market, when it was discovered not only to 
be lame, but dyspeptic ; perhaps some weed had disagreed 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


63 


with its ganglionic apparatus, poor thing. However 
that be, the goodwife had declared that the duck was 
good for nothing ; and upon the petition of her children, 
it had been consigned to them for a little innocent amuse- 
ment, and to keep them out of harm’s way. My mother 
declared that she never before saw her lord and master 
roused to such animation. He dispersed the urchins, 
released the duck, carried it home, kept it in a basket by 
the fire, fed it and physicked it till it recovered ; and then 
it was consigned to the square pond. But lo 1 the duck 
knew its benefactor ; and whenever my father appeared 
outside his door, it would catch sight of him, flap from 
the pond, gain the lawn, and hobble after him, (for it 
never quite recovered the use of its left leg,) till it reached 
the walk by the peaches ; and there sometimes it would 
sit, gravely watching its master’s deambulations ; some- 
times stroll by his side, and at all events, never leave 
him till, at his return home, he fed it with his own hands ; 
and, quacking her peaceful adieus, the nymph then retired 
to her natural element. 

With the exception of my mother’s favorite morning- 
room, the principal sitting-rooms — that is, the study, the 
dining-room, and what was emphatically called “ the best 
drawing-room,” which was only occupied on great occa- 
sions — looked south. Tall beeches, firs, poplars, and a 
few oaks backed the house, and indeed surrounded it on 
all sides but the south ; so that it was well sheltered from 
the winter cold and the summer heat. Our principal do 
mestic, in dignity and station, was Mrs. Primmins, who 


G4 


THE CAXTONS: 


was waiting gentlewoman, housekeeper, and tyrannical 
dictatrix of the whole establishment. Two other maids, 
a gardener, and a footman, composed the rest of the serv- 
ing household. Save a few pasture-fields, which he let, 
my father was not troubled with land. His income was 
derived from the interest of about £15,000, partly in the 
three per cents, partly oh mortgage ; and what with my 
mother and Mrs. Primmins, this income always yielded 
enough to satisfy my father’s single hobby for books, pay 
for my education, and entertain our neighbors ; rarely, 
indeed, at dinner, but very often at tea. My dear mo- 
ther boasted that our society was very select. It con- 
sisted chiefly of the clergyman and his family, two old 
maids who gave themselves great airs, a gentleman who 
had been in the East India service, and who lived in a 
large white house at the top of the hill ; some half-a- 
dozen squirbo and their wives and children ; Mr. Squills, 
still a bachelor : and once a-year cards were exchanged— 
and dinners too — with certain aristocrats who inspired my 
mother with a great deal of unnecessary awe ; since she 
declared they were the most good-natured, easy people 
in the world, and always stuck their cards in the most 
conspicuous part of the looking-glass frame over the 
chimney-piece of the best drawing-room. Thus you per- 
ceive that our natural position was one highly creditable 
to us, proving the soundness of our finances and the gen- 
tility of our pedigree — of which last more hereafter. At 
present I content myself with saying on that head, that 
even the proudest of the neighboring squirearchs always 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


65 


spoke of us as a very ancient family. But all my father 
ever said, to evince pride of ancestry, was in honor of 
William Caxton, citizen and printer in the reign of King 
Edward IV. — “ Clarum et venerabile nomen 1 ” an ances- 
tor a man of letters might be justly vain of. 

“ Heus,” said my father, stopping short, and lifting his 
eyes from the Colloquies of Erasmus, “ salve multum, 
jucundissime.” 

Uncle Jack was not much of a scholar, but he knew 
enough of Latin to answer, “ Salve tantundem, mi frater.” 

My father smiled approvingly. “I see you compre- 
hend true urbanity, or politeness, as we phrase it. There 
is an elegance in addressing the husband of your sister as 
brother. Erasmus commends it in his opening chapter, 
under the head of ‘ Salutandi formulae.^ And, indeed,” 
added my father thoughtfully, “ there is no great differ- 
ence between politeness and affection. My author here 
observes that it is polite to express salutation in certain 
minor distresses of nature. One should salute a gentle- 
man in yawning, salute him in hiccupping, salute him in 
sneezing, salute him in coughing; and that evidently 
because of your interest in his health ; for he may dislo- 
cate his jaw in yawning, and the hiccup is often a symp- 
tom of grave disorder, and sneezing is perilous to the 
small blood-vessels of the head, and coughing is either a 
tracheal, bronchial, pulmonary, or ganglionic affection.” 

“ Very true. The Turks always salute in sneezing, and 
they are a remarkably polite people,” said Uncle Jack. 
“ But, my dear brother, I was just looking with admira- 
6* E 


66 


THE CAXTONS: 


tion at these apple-trees of yours, I never saw finer. I 
am a great judge of apples. I find, in talking with my 
sister, that you make very little profit by them. That^s 
a pity. One might establish a cider-orchard in this 
county You can take your own fields in hand ; you can 
hire more, so as to make the whole, say a hundred acres. 
You can plant a very extensive apple-orchard on a grand 
scale. I have just run through the calculations; they 
are quite startling. Take 40 trees per acre — that’s the 
proper average — at Is. 6d. per tree ; 4000 trees for 100 
acres, £300 ; labor of digging, trenching, say £10 an 
acre — total for 100 acres, £1000. Pave the bottoms of 
the holes to prevent the tap-root striking down into the 
bad soil — oh, I am very close and careful, you see, in all 
minutiae I — always was — pave ’em with rubbish and 
stones, 6d. a hole ; that, for 4000 trees the 100 acres, is 
£100. Add the rent of the land, at 3s. an acre, £150. 
And how stands the total?” Here Uncle Jack pro- 
ceeded rapidly ticking off the items with his fingers : — 


“ Trees £ 300 

Labor 1000 

Paving holes 100 

Rent 150 

Total £1550 


That’s your expense. Mark. — Now to the profit. 
Orchards in Kent realize £100 an acre, some even £150 ; 
but let’s be moderate, say only £50 an acre, and your 
gross profit per year, from a capital of £1550, will be 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


6? 


£5000, — £5000 a-year. Think of that, brother Caxton 
Deduct XO per cent., or £500 a-year, for gardener’s wages, 
manure, &c., and the net product is £4500. Your for- 
tune’s made, man-— it is made — I wish you joy 1 ” And 
Uncle Jack rubbed his hands. 

“Bless me, father,” said eagerly the young Pisistratus, 
who had swallowed with ravished ears every syllable and 
figure of this inviting calculation, “ Why, we should be 
as rich as Squire Rollick ; and then, you know, sir, you 
could keep a pack of fox-hounds.” 

“And buy a large library,” added Uncle Jack, with 
more subtle knowledge of human nature as to its appro- 
priate temptations. “ There’s my friend the archbishop’s 
collection to be sold. 

Slowly recovering his breath, my father gently turned 
his eyes from one to the other ; and then, laying his left 
hand on my head, while with the right he held up Erasmus 
rebukingly to Uncle Jack, said — 

“ See how easily you can sow covetousness and avidity 
in the youthful mind. Ah, brother 1 ” 

“You are too severe, sir. See how the dear boy 
hangs his head I Pie I — natural enthusiasm of his years 
— ‘gay hope by fancy fed,’ as the poet says. Why, for 
that fine boy’s sake, you ought not to lose so certain an 
occasion of wealth, I may say, untold. For, observe, 
you will form a nursery of crabs ; each year you go on 
grafting and enlarging your plantation, renting, nay, why 
not buying, more land ? Gad, sir I in twenty years you 
might cover half the country ; but say you stop short a* 


68 


THE CAXTONS: 


2000 acres, why, the net profit is £90,000 a-year. A 
duke’s income — a duke’s — and going a begging, as I 
may say.” 

“ But stop,” said I modestly ; “ the trees don’t grow 
in a year. I know when our last apple-tree was planted 
— it is five years ago — it was then three years old, and 
it only bore one half-bushel last autumn.” 

“ What an intelligent lad it is I — Good head there. 
Oh, he’ll do credit to his great fortune, brother,” said 
Uncle Jack, approvingly. “ True, my boy. But in the 
meanwhile we could fill the ground, as they do in Kent, 
with gooseberries and currants, or onions and cabbages. 
Nevertheless, considering we are not great capitalists, I 
am afraid we must give up a share of our profits to 
diminish our outlay. So, harkye, Pisistratus — (look at 
him, brother — simple as he stands there, I think he is 
born with a silver spoon in his mouth) — harkye, now to 
the mysteries of speculation. Your father shall quietly 
buy the land, and then, presto I we will issue a prospectus, 
and start a company. Associations can wait five years 
for a return. Every year, meanwhile, increases the value 
of the shares. Your father takes, we say, fifty shares at 
£50 each, paying only an instalment of £2 a share. lie 
sells 35 shares at cent, per cent. He keeps the remaining 
15, and his fortune’s made all the same ; only it is not 
quite so large as if he had kept the whole concern in his 
own hands. What say you now, brother Caxton ? ‘ Vzsne 
edere pomum V as we used to say at school.” 

“ I don’t want a shilling more than I have got,” said 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


69 


my father resolutely. “ My wife would not love me better ; 
my food would not nourish me more ; my boy would not, 
in ail probability, be half so hardy, or a tenth part so 
industrious ; and ” 

“But,’’ interrupted tTncle Jack, pertinaciously, and re- 
serving his grand argument for the last, “ the good you 
would confer on the community — the progress given to 
the natural productions of your country, the wholesome 
beverage of cider, brought within cheap reach of the 
laboring classes. If it was only for your sake, should I 
have urged this question? should I now? is it in my 
character ? But for the sake of the public 1 mankind I 
of our fellow-creatures I Why, sir, England could not 
get on if gentlemen like you had not a little philanthropy 
and speculation.” 

“ Papae I ” exclaimed my father, “ to think that England 
can’t get on without turning Austin Caxton into an 
apple-merchant I My dear Jack, listen. You remind 
me of a colloquy in this book ; wait a bit — here it is — 
Pamphagus and Codes. — Codes recognizes his friend, 
who had been absent for many years, by his eminent and 
remarkable nose. — Pamphagus says, rather irritably, that 
he is not ashamed of his nose. ‘ Ashamed of it I no, 
indeed,’ says Codes: 'I never saw a nose that could be 
put to so many uses ! ’ ‘ Ha,’ says Pamphagus, (whose 

curiosity is aroused,) ‘ uses I what uses ? ’ Whereon {lepi- 
dissime f rater !) Codes, with eloquence as rapid as yours, 
runs on with a countless list of the uses to which so vast 
« development of the organ can be applied. ‘ if tht 


to 


THE CAXTONS: 


cellar was deep, it could sniff up the wine like an elephant’s 
trunk, — if the bellows were missing, it could blow the 
fire, — if the lamp was too glaring, it could suflice for a 
shade, — it would serve as a speaking-trumpet to a herald, 
it could sound a signal of battle in the field, — it would 
do for a wedge in wood-cutting — a spade for digging — 
a scythe for mowing — an anchor in sailing ; till Pampha- 
gus cries out, ‘ Lucky dog that I am ! and I never knew 
before what a useful piece of furniture I carried about 
with me. ’ ” My father paused and strove to whistle, but 
that effort of harmony failed him— and he added, smiling, 
“So much for my apple-trees, brother John. Leave 
them to their natural destination of filling tarts and 
dumplings.” 

Uncle Jack looked a little discomposed for a moment ; 
but he then laughed with his usual heartiness, and saw 
that he had not yet got to my father’s blind side. I con- 
fess that my revered parent rose in my estimation after 
that conference ; and I began to see that a man may not 
be quite without common sense, though he is a scholar. 
Indeed, whether it was that Uncle Jack’s visit acted as a 
gentle stimulant, to his relaxed faculties, or that I, now 
grown older and wiser, began to see his character more 
clearly, I date from those summer holidays the commence- 
ment of that familiar and endearing intimacy which ever 
after existed between my father and myself. Often I 
deserted the more extensive rambles of Uncle Jack, or 
the greater allurements of a cricket-match in the village, 
or a day’s fishing in Squire Rollick’s preserves, for a quiet 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


11 


stroll with ray father by the old peach-wall ; — soraetimes 
silent, indeed, and already musing over the future, while 
he was busy with the past, but amply rew arded when, sus* 
pending his lecture, he would pour forth hoards of varied 
learning, rendered amusing by his quaint comments, and 
that Socratic satire which only fell short of wit because 
it never passed into malice. At some moments, indeed, 
the vein ran into eloquence \ and with some fine heroic 
sentiment in his old books, his stooping form rose erect, 
his eye flashed ; and you saw that he had not been origi - 
nally formed and wholly meant for the obscure seclusion 
in which his harmless days now wore contentedly away. 


CHAPTER lY. 

*‘Egad, sir, the country is going to the dogs I Oui 
sentiments are not represented in parliament or out of it. 
The County Mercury has ratted, and be hanged to it 1 
and now we have not one newspaper in the whole shire 
to express the sentiments of the respectable part of the 
community I ” 

This speech was made on the occasion of one of the 
rare dinners given by Mr. and Mrs. Caxton to the gran- 
dees of the neighborhood, and uttered by no less a person 
than Squire Rollick, of Rollick Hall, chairman of the 
piartcr-sesSions. 

i confess that I (for I was permitted on that first occa- 


72 


THE CAXTONS: 


sion not only to dine with the guests, but to outstay the 
ladies, in virtue of my growing years, and my promise to 
abstain from the decanters) — I confess, I say, that I, 
poor innocent, was puzzled to conjecture what sudden 
interest in the county newspaper could cause Uncle Jack 
to prick up his ears like a war-horse at the sound of the 
drum^ and rush so incontinently across the interval be- 
tween Squire Rollick and himself. But the mind of that 
deep and truly knowing man was not to be plumbed by a 
chit of my age. You could not fish for the shy salmon 
in that pool with a crooked pin and a bobbin, as you 
would for 'minnows ; or, to indulge in a more worthy 
illustration, you could not say of him, as St. Gregory 
saith of the streams of Jordan, “A lamb could wade 
easily through that ford.” 

^‘Not a county newspaper to advocate the rights 
of- ” here my uncle stopped, as if at a loss, and whis- 
pered, in my ear, “ What are his politics ? ” “ Don’t 

know,” answered I. Uncle Jack intuitively took down 
from his memory the phrase most readily at hand, and 
added, with a nasal intonation, “ the rights of our dis- 
tressed fellow-creatures I ” 

My father scratched his eyebrow with his fore-finger, 
as he was apt to do when doubtful ; the rest of the com- 
pany — a silent set — looked up. 

“ Fellow-creatures I ” said Mr. Rollick — “ fellow-fid- 
dlesticks I ” 

Uncle Jack was clearly in the wrong box. He drew 
out of it cautiously — “ I mean,” said he, “ our respect- 


A. FAMILY PICTURE. 


73 


Me fellow-creatures and then suddenly it occurred to 
him that a “ County Mercury” would naturally represent 
the agricultural interest, and that if Mr. Rollick said that 
the “ County Mercury ought to be hanged,” he was one 
of those politicians who had already begun to call the 
agricultural interest “aYampire.” Flushed with that 
fancied discovery. Uncle Jack rushed on, intending to 
bear along with the stream, thus fortunately directed, all 
the “rubbish”* subsequently shot into Covent Garden 
and Hall of Commerce. 

“Yes, respectable fellow-creatures, men of capital and 
enterprise I For what are these country squires com- 
pared to our wealthy merchants ? What is this agricul- 
tural interest, that professes to be the prop of the land ? ” 
“Professes!” cried Squire Rollick — “it is the prop 
of the land ; and as for those manufacturing fellows who 

have bought up the Mercury ” 

“Bought up the Mercury, have they, the villains!” 
cried Uncle Jack, interrupting the Squire, and now burst- 
ing into full scent — “ Depend upon it, sir, it is a part of 
a diabolical system of buying up, which must be exposed 
manfully. — Yes, as I was saying, what is that agricultu- 
ral interest which they desire to ruin ? which they declare 
to be so bloated — which they call ‘ a vampire ! ’ they the 
true blood-suckers, the venomous millocrats ! Fellow- 
creatures, sir I I may well call distressed fellow-creatures 
the members of that much-suffering class of which you 

* “ We talked sad rubbish when we first began,*’ says Mr. Cobden 
one of las speeches. 

X. — 7 


74 


THE CAXTONS : 


yourself are an ornament. What can be more deserving 
of our best efforts for relief, than a country gentleman 
like yourself, we’ll say — of a nominal £5000 a-year — 
compelled to keep up an establishment, pay for his fox- 
hounds, support the whole population by contributions to 
the poor-rates, support the whole church by tithes ; all 
justice, jails, and prosecutions by the county rates — all 
thoroughfares by the highway rates — ground down by 
mortgages, Jews, or jointures ; having to provide for 
younger children ; enormous expenses for cutting his 
woods, manuring his model farm, and fattening huge 
oxen till every pound of flesh costs him five pounds ster- 
ling in oil-cake ; and then the law-suits necessary to pro- 
tect his rights; plundered on all hands by poachers, 
sheep-stealers, dog-stealers, churchwardens, overseers, 
gardeners, game-keepers, and that necessary rascal, his 
steward. If ever there was a distressed fellow-creature 
in the world, it is a country gentleman with a great 
estate. ” 

My father evidently thought this an exquisite piece of 
banter, for by the corner of his mouth I saw that he 
chuckled inly. 

Squire Rollick, who had interrupted the speech by 
sundry approving exclamations, particularly at the men. 
tion of poor-rates, tithes, county-rates, mortgages, and 
poachers, here pushed the bottle to Uncle Jack, and said, 
civilly, — “ There’s a great deal of truth in what you say, 
Mr. Tibbets. The agricultural interest is going to ruin ; 
and when it does, I would not give that for Old Eng- 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


75 


land 1 ” and Mr. Rollick snapped his finger and thumb. 

But what is to be done — done for the county ? There’s 
the rub.” 

“I was just coming to that,” quoth TJncle Jack. 
"You say that you have not a county paper that upholds 
your cause, and denounces your enemies.” 

" Not since the Whigs bought the shire Mercury.” 

" Why, good heavens 1 Mr Rollick, how can you sup- 
pose that you will have justice done you, if at this time 
of day you neglect the press ? The press, sir — there it 
is — air we breathe I What you want is a great national 
^no, not a national — A provincial proprietary weekly 
journal, supported liberally and steadily by that mighty 
party whose very existence is at stake. Without such a 
paper, you are gone, you are dead, extinct, defunct, buried 
alive ; with such a paper, well conducted, well edited by 
a man of the world, of education, of practical experience 
in agriculture and human nature, mines, com, manure, 
insurances, acts of parliament, cattle-shows, the state of 
parties, and the best interests of society — with such a 
man and such a paper, you will carry all before you. But 
it must be done by subscription, by association, by co- 
operation, by a Grand Provincial Benevolent Agricul- 
tural Anti-innovating Society.” 

"Egad, sir, you are right I ” said Mr. Rollick, slapping 
his thigh ; " and I’ll ride over to our Lord-Lieutenant to- 
morrow. His eldest son ought to carry the county.” 

"And he will, if you encourage the press and set up a 
journal,” said TJncle Jack, rubbing his hands, and then 


THE CAXTONS: 


T6 

gently stretching them out, and drawing them gradually 
together, as if he were already enclosing in that airy 
circle the unsuspecting guineas of the unborn association. 

All happiness dwells more in the hope than the pos- 
session ; and at that moment, I dare be sworn that Uncle 
Jack felt a livelier rapture, circum prcecordia, warming 
his entrails, and diffusing throughout his whole frame of 
five feet eight the prophetic glow of the Magna Diva 
Moneta, than if he had enjoyed for ten years the actual 
possession of King Croesus’s privy purse. 

“ I thought Uncle Jack was not a Tory,’’ said I to my 
father the next day. 

My father, who cared nothing for politics, opened his 
eyes. 

“Are you a Tory or a Whig, papa ? ” 

“Um,” said my father — “there’s a great deal to bo 
said on both sides of the question. You see, my boy, 
that Mrs. Primmins has a great many moulds for our 
butter-pats ; sometimes they come up with a crown on 
them, sometimes with the more popular impress of a cow. 
It is all very well for those who dish up the butter to 
print it according to their taste, or in proof of their abili- 
ties ; it is enough for us to butter our bread, say grace, 
and pay for the dairy. Do you understand ? ” 

“Not a bit, sir.” 

“ Your namesake Pisistratus was wiser than you, then,” 
said my father. “And now let us feed the duck. Where’s 
your uncle ? ” 

“lie has borrowed Mr. Squills’ mare, sir, and gone 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 

with Squire Rollick to the great lord they were talking 
of.” 

“Oho I” said my father, “brother Jack is going tl 
print his butter I ” 

And indeed Uncle Jack played his cards so we.l on 
this occasion, and set before the Lord-Lieutenant, with 
whom he had a personal interview, so fine a prospectus, 
and so nice a calculation, that before my holidays were 
over, he was installed in a very handsome office in the 
county town, with private apartments over it, and a salary 
of £500 a-year — for advocating the cause of his dis- 
tressed fellow-creatures, including noblemen, squires, yeo- 
manry, farmers, and all yearly subscribers in the New 

Proprietary Agricultural Anti-innovating 

BHiRE Weekly Gazette. At the head of his newspaper 
Uncle Jack caused to be engraved a crown supported by 
a flail and a crook, with the motto, “ Pro rege et grege 
I — And that was the way in which Uncle Jack printed 
his pats of butter. 


CHAPTER V. 

I SEEMED to myself to have made a leap in life when I 
returned to school. I no longer felt as a boy. Uncle 
Jack, out of his own purse, had presented me with my 
first pair of Wellington boots; my mother had been 
coaxed into allowing me a small tail to jackets hitherto 
tail-less ; my collars, which had been wont, gpaniel-like, 
7 * 


THE CAXTONS: 


to flap and fall about my neck, now, terrier-wise, stood 
erect and rampant, encompassed with a circumvallation 
of whalebone, buckram, and black silk. I was, in truth, 
nearly seventeen, and I gave myself the airs of a man. 
Now, be it observed, that that crisis in adolescent exist- 
ence wherein we first pass from Master Sisty into Mr. 
Pisistratus, or Pisistratus Caxton, Esq. — wherein we ar- 
rogate, and with tacit concession from our elders, the 
long-envied title of “young man” — always seems a 
sudden and imprompt upshooting and elevation. We do 
not mark the gradual preparations thereto ; we remem- 
ber only one distinct period in which all the signs and 
symptoms burst and effloresced together: Wellington 
boots, coat tail, cravat, down on the upper lip, thoughts 
on razors, reveries on young ladies, and a new kind of 
sense of poetry. 

T began now to read steadily, to understand what I 
did read, and to cast some anxious looks towards the 
future, with vague notions that I had a place to win in 
the world, and that nothing is to be won without perse- 
verance and labor ; and so I went on till I was seven- 
teen, and at the head of the school, when I received the 
two letters I subjoin. 

1. — From Augustine Caxton, Esq. 

“My dear Son, — I have informed Dr. Herman that 
you will not return to him after the approaching holidays. 
You are old enough now to look forward to the embraces 
of our beloved Alma Mater, and I think studious enough 


A FAMILY PICTUEE. 


to 


to hope for the honors she bestows on her worthier son^ 
You are already entered at Trinity, — and in fancy I see 
my youth return to me in your image. I see you wander- 
ing where the Cam steals its way through those noble 
gardens ; and, confusing you with myself, I recall the old 
dreans that haunted me when the chiming bells swung 
over the placid waters. * Yerum secretumque Mouseiout 
quam multa dictatis, quam multa invenitis 1 ’ There at 
that illustrious college, unless the race has indeed degene- 
rated, you will measure yourself with young giants. You 
will see those who, in the Law, the Church, the State, or 
the still cloisters of Learning, are destined to become the 
eminent leaders of your age. To rank amongst them you 
are not forbidden to aspire ; he who in youth ‘ can scorn 
delight, and love laborious days,^ should pitch high his 
ambition. 

“ Your Uncle Jack says he has done wonders with his 
newspaper, — though Mr. Rollick grumbles, and declares 
that it is full of theories, and that it puzzles the farmers. 
Uncle Jack, in reply, contends that he creates an audience, 
not addresses one, — and sighs that his genius is thrown 
away in a provincial town. In fact, he really is a very 
clever man, and might do much in London, I dare say. 
He often comes over to dine and sleep, returning the next 
morning. His energy is wonderful — and contagious. 
Can you imagine that he has actually stirred up the flame 
of my vanity, by constantly poking at the bars ? Mcta- 
pnor apart — I find myself collecting all my notes and 
oommoiiplaces, and wondering to see how easily they fall 


80 


THE CAXTONS: 


into method, and take shape in chapters and books. I 
cannot help smiling when I add, that I fancy I am going 
to become an author ; and smiling more when I think 
that your Uncle Jack should have provoked me into so 
egregious an ambition. However, I have read some pas* 
sages of my book to your mother, and she says, it ii 
vastly fine,’ which is encouraging. Your mother has 
great good sense, though I don’t mean to say that she has 
much learning, — which is a wonder, considering that Pic 
de la Mirandola was nothing to her father. Yet he died, 
dear great man, and never printed a line, — while I — 
positively I blush to think of my temerity I 

“Adieu, my son ; make the best of the time that re- 
mains with you at the Philhellenic. A full mind is the 
true Pantheism, plena Jovis. It is only in some corner 
of the brain which we leave empty that Yice can obtain 
a lodging. When she knocks at your door, my son, be 
able to say, *No room for your ladyship, — pass on.’ 
Your aflTectionate father, 

“A. Caxton.” 

2 — From Mrs. Caxton. 

“ My dearest Sisty, — You are coming home I — My 
heart is so full of that thought that it seems to me as if I 
could not write anything else. Hear child, you are coming 
home ; — you have done with school, you have done with 
strangers, — ^you are our own, all our own son again 1 You 
are mine again, as you were in the cradle, the nursery, 
and the garden, Sisty, when we used to throw daisies at 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


81 


each other! You will laugh at me so, when E tell you, 
that as soon as I heard you were coming home for good, 
I crept away from the room, and went to my drawer 
where I keep, you know, all my treasures. There was 
your little cap that I worked myself, and your poor little 
nankeen jacket that you were so proud to throw off — oh 1 
and many other relics of you when you were little Sisty, 
and I was not the cold, formal ‘ Mother’ you call me now, 
but dear ‘ Mamma.’ I kissed them, Sisty, and said, ‘ my 
little child is coming back to me again ! ’ So foolish was 
I, I forgot all the long years that have passed, and fancied 
I could carry you again in my arms, and that I should 
again coax you to say ‘ God bless papa.’ Well, well ! I 
write now between laughing and crying. You cannot be 
what you were, but you are still my own dear sou — your 
father’s son — dearer to me than all the world — except 
that father. 

“ I am so glad, too, that you will come so soon : come 
while your father is really warm with his book, and while 
you can encourage and keep him to it. For why should 
he not be great and famous ? Why should not all admire 
him as we do ? You know how proud of him I always 
was ; but I do so long to let the world know why I was 
so proud. And yet, after all, it is not only because he is 
BO wise and learned, — but because he is so good, and has 
suv.h a large and noble heart. But the heart must appear 
in the book too, as well as the learning. For though it 
is full of things I don’t understand — every now and then 


V 


82 


THE OAXTONS: 


there ts something I do understand — that seems as if 
that heart spoke out to all the world. 

“ Your uncle has undertaken to get it published ; and 
your father is going up to town with him about it, as soon 
as the first volume is finished. 

“All are quite well except poor Mrs. Jones, who has 
the ague very bad indeed ; Primmins has made her wear 
a charm for it, and Mrs. Jones actually declares she is 
already much better. One can’t deny that there may be 
a great deal in such things, though it seems quite against 
the reason. Indeed your father says, ‘Why not? A 
charm must be accompanied by a strong wish on the part 
of the charmer that it may succeed, — and what is magnet- 
ism but a wish ?’ I don’t quite comprehend this ; but, 
like all your father says, it has more than meets the eye, 
I am quite sure. 

“Only three weeks to the holidays, and then no more 
school, Sisty — no more school ! I shall have your room 
all done freshly, and made so pretty; they are coming 
about it to-morrow. 

“ The duck is quite well, and I really don’t think it is 
quite as lame as it was. 

“God bless you, dear, dear child. Your afifectiorito 
happy mother. “K. C.’^ 

Th^ interval between these letters and the morning on 
which I was to return home seemed to me like one of 
those long, restless, yet half-dreamy days which in some 
infant malady I had passed in a sick-bed. I went through 
my taskwork mechanically,composed a Greek ode in fare- 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


83 


well to the Philhellenic, which Dr. Herman pronounced a 
chef d'ceuvre, and my father, to whom I sent it in tri- 
umph, returned a letter of false English with it, that 
parodied all my Hellenic barbarisms by imitating them in 
mj mother tongue. However, I swallowed the leek, and 
consoled myself with the pleasing recollection that, after 
spending six years in learning to write bad Greek, I 
should never have any further occasion to avail myself 
of so precious an accomplishment. 

And so came the last day. Then alone, and in a kind 
of delighted melancholy, I revisited each of the old 
haunts. The robber’s cave we had dug one winter, 
and maintained, six of us, against all the police of the 
little kingdom. The place near the pales where I had 
fought my first battle. The old beech stump on which I 
sate to read letters from home I With my knife, rich in 
six blades, (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker, and a but- 
ton-hook,) I carved my name in large capitals over my 
desk. Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went 
to our rooms. And I opened the window and looked 
out. I saw all the stars, and wondered which was mine 
— which should light to fame and fortune the manhood 
about' to commence. Hope and Ambition were high 
within me; — and yet, behind them, stood Melancholy. 
Ah I who amongst you, readers, can now summon back 
all those thoughts, sweet and sad — all that untold, half- 
conscious regret for the past — all those vague longings 
for the future, which made a poet of the dullest on the 
last night before leaving boyhood and school for ever 1 


PAET THIRD. 


CHAPTER I. 

It vas a beautiful summer afternoon when the coach 
set me down at my father’s gate. Mrs. Primmins her- 
self rah out to welcome me ; and I had scarcely escaped 
from the warm clasp of her friendly hand, before I was 
in the arms of my mother. 

As soon as that tenderest of parents was convinced 
that I was not famished, seeing that I had dined two 
hours ago at Dr. Herman’s, she led me gently across the 
garden towards the arbor. “You will find your father 
so cheerful,” said she wiping away a tear. “ His brother 
is with him.” 

I stopped. His brother ! Will the reader believe it ? 
— I had never heard that he had a brother, so little weie 
family affairs ever discussed in my hearing. 

*‘His brother!” said I. “Have I then an Uncle 
Caxton as well as an Uncle Jack ?” 

“ Yes, my love,” said my mother. And then she added, 
“ Your father and he were not such good friends as they 

( 84 ) 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


85 


ought to have been, and the Captain has been abroad. 
However, thank Heaven 1 they are now quite reconciled.’' 

We had time for no more — we were in the arbor. 
There, a table was spread with wine and fruit — the gen- 
tlemen were at their dessert ; and those gentlemen were 
my father. Uncle Jack, Mr. Squills, and— tall, lean, but- 
toned-to-the-chin — an erect, martial, majestic, and im- 
posing personage, who seemed worthy of a place in my 
great ancestor’s “Boke of Chivalrie.” 

All rose as I entered ; but my poor father, who was 
always slow in his movements, had the last of me. Uncle 
Jack had left the very powerful impression of his great 
seal-ring on my fingers ; Mr. Squills had patted me on 
the shoulder, and pronounced me “wonderfully grown;” 
my new-found relative had with great dignity said, 
“Nephew, your hand, sir — I am Captain de Caxton 
and even the tame duck had taken her beak from her 
wing, and rubbed it gently between my legs, which was 
her usual mode of salutation, before my father had placed 
his pale hand on my forehead, and, looking at me for a 
moment with unutterable sweetness, said, “More and 
more like your mother — God bless you I” 

A chair had been kept vacant for me between my father 
and his brother. I sat down in haste, and with a ting- 
ling color on my cheeks and a rising at my throat, so 
much had the unusual kindness of my father’s greeting 
affected me ; and then there came over me a sense of my 
new position. I was no longer a schoolboy at home for 
his brief holiday : I had returned to the shelter of the 

1—8 


86 


THE CAXTONS 


roof'treo to become myself one of its supports. I was 
at last a man, privileged to aid or solace those dear ones 
who had ministered, as yet without return, to me. That 
is a very strange crisis in our life when we come home 
<‘/or good.^^ Home seems a different thing : before, one 
has been but a sort of guest after all, only welcomed and 
indulged, and little festivities held in honor of the re- 
leased and happy child. But to come home for good — 
to have done with school and boyhood — is to be a guest, 
a child no more. It is to share the everyday life of cares 
and duties — it is to enter into the confidences of home. 
Is it not so ? I could have buried my face in my hands, 
and wept 1 

My father, with all his abstraction and all his simpli- 
city, had a knack now and then of penetrating at once 
to the heart. I verily believe he read all that was pass- 
ing in mine as easily as if it had been Greek. He stole 
his arm gently round my waist and whispered, “ Hush I 
Then lifting his voice, he cried aloud, “ Brother Roland, 
you must not let Jack have the best of the argument.’^ 

“ Brother Austin,’^ replied the Captain, very formally, 
“ Mr. Jack, if I may take the liberty so to call him.’^ 

“ You may indeed,” cried Uncle Jack. 

‘‘Sir,” said the Captain, bowing, “it is a familiarity 
that does me honor. I was about to say that Mr. Jack 
has retired from the field.” 

“ Far from it,” said Squills, dropping an effervescing 
powder into a chemical mixture which he had been pre- 
paring with great attention, composed of sherry and 


A FAMILY PICTURE, 


81 


lemon-juice — “ far from it. Mr. Tibbets — whose organ 
of combativev 3SS is finely developed, by the bye — was 
saying” 

“ That it is a rank sin and shame in the nineteenth cen- 
tury,” quoth Uncle Jack, “that a man like my friend 

Captain Caxton ” 

Caxton, sir — Mr. Jack.” 

“ De Caxton — of the highest military talents, of the 
most illustrious descent — a hero sprung from heroes — 
should have served so many years, and with such distinc- 
tion, in his Majesty’s service, and should now be only a 
captain on half-pay. This, I say, comes of the infamous 
system of purchase, which sets up the highest honors for 
sale as they did in the Roman empire ” 

My father pricked up his ears ; but Uncle Jack pushed 
on before my father could get ready the forces of his me- 
ditated interruption. 

“A system which a little effort, a little union, can so 
easily terminate. Yes, sir,” — and Uncle Jack thumped 
the table, and two cherries bobbed up and smote Captain 
de Caxton on the nose — “ yes, sir, I will undertake to 
say that I could put the army upon a very different foot- 
ing. If the poorer and more meritorious gentlemen, like 
Captain de Caxton, would, as I was just observing, but 
unite in a grand anti-aristocratic association, each paying 
a small sum quarterly, we could realise a capital sufficient 
to outpurchase all these undeserving individuals, and 
every man of m irit should have his fair chance of pro- 
motion ” 


88 


THE C AXT0N8: 


^‘Egad, sir,” said Squills, “there is something grand 
in that — eh. Captain?” 

“No, sir,” replied the Captain quite seriously ; “ there 
is in monarchies but one fountain of honor. It would be 
an interference with a soldier’s first duty — his respect for 
his sovereign.” 

“On the contrary,” said Mr. Squills, “it would still be 
to the sovereigns that one would owe the promotion.” 

“ Honor,” pursued the Captain, coloring up, and un- 
heeding this witty interruption, “ is the reward of a sol- 
dier. What do I care that a young jackanapes buys his 
colonelcy over my head ? Sir, he does not buy from me 
my wounds and my services. Sir, he does not buy from 
me the medal I won at Waterloo. He is a rich man, and 
I am a poor man; he is called — colonel, because he 
paid money for the name. That pleases him ; well and 
good. It would not please me ; I had rather remain a 
captain, and feel my dignity, not in my title, but in the 
services by which it has been won. A beggarly, rascally 
association of stockbrokers, for aught I know, buy me a 
company I I don’t want to be uncivil, or I should say 
damn ’em, Mr. — sir — Jack I ” 

A sort of thrill ran through the Captain’s audience — 
even Uncle Jack seemed touched, for he stared very hard 
at the grim veteran, and said nothing. The pause was 
awkward — Mr. Squills broke it. “I should like,” quoth 
he, “ to see your Waterloo medal — you have it not about 
you ? ” 

“ Mr. Squills,” answered the Captain, “ it lies next to 
mv heart while I live. It shall be buried in my coffin, 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


89 


and I shall rise with it, at the word of command, on the 
day of the Grand Review I ” So saying, the Captain 
leisurely unbuttonned his coat, and, detaching from a piece 
of striped ribbon as ugly a specimen of the art of the 
silversmith (begging its pardon) as ever rewarded merit 
at the expense of taste, placed the medal on the table. 

The medal passed round, without a word, from hand to 
hand. 

It is strange,” at last said my father, “ how 'such tri- 
fles can be made of such value — how in one age a man 
sells his life for what in the next age he would not give 
a button I A Greek esteemed beyond price a few leaves 
of olive twisted into a circular shape, and set upon his 
head — a very ridiculous head-gear we should now call it. 
An American Indian prefers a decoration of human 
scalps, which, I apprehend, we should all agree (save and 
except Mr. Squills, who is accustomed to such things) to 
be a very disgusting addition to one’s personal attrac- 
tions ; and my brother values this piece of silver, which 
may be worth about five shillings, more than Jack does 
a gold-mine, or I do the library of the London Museum. 
A time will come when people will think that as idle a 
decoration as leaves and scalps.” 

“ Brother,” said the Captain, “ there is nothing strange 
in the matter. It is as plain as a pike-staff to a man who 
understands the principles of honor.” 

“ Possibly,” said my father mildly. “ I should like to 
hear what you have to say upon honor. I am sure it 
would very much edify us all.” 

8 * 


90 


THE OAXTONS: 


CHAPTER II. 

MY UNCLE ROLAND’S DISCOURSE UPON HONOR. 

Gentlemen,” began the Captain, at the distinct ap- 
peal thus made to him — “Gentlemen, God made the 
earth, but man made the garden. God made man, but 
man re-creates himself.” 

“ True, by knowledge,” said my father. 

“By industry,” said Uncle Jack. 

“By the physical conditions of his body,” said Mr. 
Squills. “ He could not have made himself other than 
he was at first in the woods and wilds if he had fins like 
a fish, or could only chatter gibberish like a monkey. 
Hands and a tongue, sir ; these are the instruments of 
progress.” 

“Mr. Squills,” said my father, nodding, “Anaxagoras 
said very much the same thing before you, touching the 
hands.” 

“ I can’t help that,” answered Mr. Squills ; “ one could 
not open one’s lips, if one were bound to say what nobody 
else had said. But, after all, our superiority is less in our 
han^ than the greatness of our thumbs.^^ 

“Albinus, de Sceleto, and our own learned William 
Lawrence, have made a similar remark,” again put in ray 
father. 


A FAMILY PICTURE 


9i 


Hang it, sir I ” exclaimed Squills, “ what business 
have you to know everything ? ” 

“Everything! No; but thumbs furnish subjects of 
investigation to the simplest understanding,” said my 
father, modestly. 

“ G entlemen,” recommenced my Uncle Roland, “ thumbs 
and hands are given to an Esquimaux, as well as to 
scholars and surgeons — and what the deuce are they the 
wiser for them ? Sirs, you cannot reduce us thus into 
mechanism. Look within. Man, I say, re-creates him- 
self. How? By the principle of honor. His first 
desire is to excel some one else — his first impulse is dis- 
tinction above his fellows. Heaven places in his soul, as 
if it were a compass, a needle that always points to one 
end, — viz., to honor in that which those around him con- 
sider honorable. Therefore, as man at first is exposed to 
all dangers from wild beasts, and from men as savage as 
himself. Courage becomes the first quality mankind must 
honor : therefore the savage is courageous : therefore he 
covets the praise for courage ; therefore he decorates 
himself with the skins of the beasts he has subdued, or 
the scalps of the foes he has slain. Sirs, don’t tell me 
that the skins and the scalps are only hide and leather • 
they are trophies of honor. Don’t tell me that they are 
ridiculous and disgusting ; they become glorious as proofs 
that the savage has emerged out of the first brute-like 
egotism, and attached price to the praise which men never 
give except for works that secure or advance their welfare. 
By-and-by, sirs, our savages discover that they cannot live 


92 


THE CAXTONS; 


in safety amongst themselves, unless they agrqe to speak 
the truth to each other : therefore Truth becomes valued, 
and grows into a principle of honor ; so, brother Austin 
will tell us that in the primitive times, truth was always 
the attribute of a hero.’^ 

“ Right,” said my father ; “ Homer emphatically assigns 
it to Achilles.” 

“Out of truth comes the necessity for some kind of 
rude justice and law. Therefore men, after courage in 
the warrior, and truth in all, begin to attach honor to the 
elder, whom they intrust with preserving justice amongst 
them. So, sirs. Law is born” 

“ But the first lawgivers were priests,” quoth my father. 

“ Sirs, I am coming to that. Whence arises the desire 
of honor, but from man’s necessity of excelling — in other 
words, of improving his faculties for the benefit of others, 
— though, unconscious of that consequence, man only 
strives for praise ? But that desire for honor is un- 
extinguishable, and man is naturally anxious to carry its 
rewards beyond the grave. Therefore, he who has slain 
most lions or enemies, is naturally prone to believe that 
he shall have the best hunting-fields in the country beyond, 
and take the best place at the banquet. Nature, in all 
its operations, impresses man with the idea of an invisible 
Power; and the principle of honor — that is, the desire 
of praise and reward — makes him anxious for the approval 
which that Power can bestow. Thence comes the first 
rude idea of Religion ; and in the death-hymn at the 
stake, the savage chants songs prophetic of the distinctions 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


93 


he is about to receive. Society goes on ; hamlets are 
built ; property is established. He who has more than 
another has more power than another. Power is honored. 
Man covets the honor attached to the power which is 
attached to possession. Thus the soil is cultivated ; thus 
the rafts are constructed ; thus tribe trades with tribe ; 
thus Commerce is founded, and Civilization commenced. 
Sirs, all that seems least connected with honor, as we ap- 
proach the vulgar days of the present, has its origin in 
honor, and is but an abuse of its principles. If men now- 
a-days are hucksters and traders — if even military honors 
are purchased, and a rogue buys his way to a peerage — 
still all arise from the desire for honor, which society, as. 
it grows old, gives to the outward signs of titles and 
gold, instead of, as once, to its inward essentials, — cour- 
age, truth, justice, enterprise. Therefore, I say, sirs, that 
honor is the foundation of all improvement in mankind.” 

“ You have argued like a schoolman, brother,” said 
Mr. Caxton, admiringly ; “ but still, as to this round piece 
of silver — don’t we go back to the most barbarous ages 
in estimating so highly such things as have no real value 
in themselves — as could not give us one opportunity f:jr 
instructing our minds ? ” 

“ Could not pay for a pair of boots,” added Uncle Jack. 

“ Or,” said Mr. Squills, “ save you one twinge of the 
cursed rheumatism you have got for life from that night’s 
bivouac in the Portuguese marshes — to say nothing of the 
bullet in your cranium, and that cork-leg, which must 
much diminish the salutary effects of your constitutional 
walk.” 


94 


THE C AXTONS : 


“ Gentlemen,” resumed the Captain, nothing abashed, 
in going back to those barbarous ages, I go back to 
the true principles of honor. It is precisely because this 
round piece of silver has no value in the market that it 
is priceless, for thus it is only a proof of desert. Where 
would be the sense of service in this medal, if it could 
buy back my leg, or if I could bargain it away for forty 
thousand a-year ? No, sirs, its value is this — that when 
I wear it on my breast, men shall say, ‘ that formal old 
fellow is not so useless as he seems. He was one of 
those who saved England and freed Europe.’ And even 
when I conceal it here,” (and, devoutly kissing the medal, 
Uncle Roland restored it to its ribbon and its resting- 
place), “ and no eye sees it, its value is yet greater in the 
thought that my country has not degraded the old and 
true principles of honor, by paying the soldier who fought 
for her in the same coin as that in which you, Mr. Jack, 
sir, .pay your bootmaker’s bill. No, no, gentlemen. As 
courage was the first virtue that honor called forth — the 
first virtue from which all safety and civilization proceed, 
so we do right to keep that one virtue at least clear and 
unsullied from all the money-making, mercenary, pay-me- 
in-cash abominations which are the vices, not the virtues, 
of the civilization it has produced.” 

My Uncle Roland here came to a full stop ; and, filling 
bis glass, rose and said solemnly — “A last bumper, gen- 
tlemen, — ‘ To the dead who died for England 1 ’ ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


95 


CHAPTER III. 

“Indeed, my dear, you must take it. You certainlj 
have caught cold ; you sneezed three times together.” 

“Yes, ma’am, because I would take a pinch of Uncle 
Roland’s snuff, just to say that I had taken a pinch out 
of his box — the honor of the thing, you know.” 

“Ah, my dear I what was that very clever remark you 
made at the same time, which so pleased your father — 
something about Jews and the college ?” 

“Jews and — oh 1 ‘ pulverem Olympicum collegisse 
juvat,' my dear mother — which means, that it is a plea- 
sure to take a pinch out of a brave man’s snuff-box. I 
say, mother, put down the posset. Yes, I’ll take it ; I 
will, indeed. Now, then, sit here — that’s right — and tell 
me all you know about this famous old Captain. Im- 
primis, he is older than my father ! ” 

“ To be sure ! ” exclaimed my mother indignantly ; “ he 
looks twenty years older ; but there is only five years’ 
real difference. Your father must always look young.” 

“And why does Uncle Roland put that absurd French 
de before his name — and why were my father and he not 
good friends — and is he married — and has he any 
children ? ” 

Scone of this c»mfercnce — my own little room, new 


96 


THE CAXTONS: 


papered on purpose for my return for good — trellis-worli 
paper, flowers and birds — all so fresh, so new, and so 
clean, and so gay — with my books ranged in neat shelves, 
and a writing-table by the window ; and, without the 
window, shines the still summer moon. The window is 
a little open — you scent the flowers and the new-mown 
ha^. Past eleven; and the boy and his dear mother are 
all alone 

“ My dear, my dear I you ask so many questions at 
once.’' 

“ Don’t answer them, then. Begin at the beginning, 
as Nurse Primmins does with her fairy tales — ‘Once on 
a time.’ ” 

“ Once on a time, then,” said my mother — kissing me 
between the eyes — “ once on a time, my love, there was 
a certain clergyman in Cumberland, who had two sons; 
he had but a small living, and the boys were to make 
their own way in the world. But close to the parsonage, on 
the brow of a hill, rose an old ruin, with one tower left, 
and this, with half the country round it, had once be- 
longed to the clergyman’s family ; but all had been sold 
— all gone piece by piece, you see, my dear, except the 
presentation to the living (what they call the advowson 
was sold too), whieh had been secured to the last of the 
family. The elder of these sons was your Dncle Roland 
— the younger was your father. Now I believe the first 
quarrel arose from the absurdest thing possible, as your 
father says, but Roland was exceedingly touchy on all 
things connected with his ancestors. lie was always 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


91 


poring over the old pedigree, or wandering amongst the 
ruins, or reading books of knight-errantry. Well, where 
this pedigree began I know not, but it seems that King 
Henry II. gave some lands in Cumberland to one Sir 
Adam de Caxton ; and from that time, you see, the pedi- 
gree went regularly from father to son till Henry Y. ; 
then, apparently from the disorders produced, as your 
father says, by the Wars of the Roses, there was a sad 
blank left — only one or two names, without dates or mar- 
riages, till the time of Henry YII., except that in the 
reign of Edward lY., there was one insertion of a Wil- 
liam Caxton (named in a deed). Now in the village 
church, there was a beautiful brass monument, to one Sir 
William de Caxton, who had been killed at the battle of 
Bosworth, fighting for that wicked King Richard III. 
And about the same time there lived, as you know, the 
great printer, William Caxton. Well, your father, hap- 
pening to be in town on a visit to his aunt, took great 
trouble in hunting up all the old papers he could find at 
the Herald’s College ; and sure enough he was overjoyed 
to satisfy himself that he was descended, not from that 
poor Sir William, who had been killed in so bad a cause, 
but from the great printer, who was from a younger 
branch of the same family, and to whose descendants the 
estate came in the reign of Henry YIII. It was upon 
this that your Uncle Roland quarrelled with him ; and 
indeed I tremble to think that they may touch on that 
matter again.” 

“ Then, my dear mother, I must say my uncle was 
t — 9 


a 


98 


THE CAXTONS: 


wrong there, so far as common sense is concerned ; but 
still, somehow or other, I can understand it. Surely this 
was not the only cause of estrangement.” 

My mother looked down, and moved one hand gently 
over the other, which was her way when embarrassed. 
“ What was it, my own mother ? ” said I, coaxingly. 

“I believe — that is, I — I think that they were both 
attached to the same young lady.” 

“ How ! you don’t mean to say that my father was ever 
in love with any one but you ? ” 

“ Yes, Sisty — yes, and deeply I and,” added my mother, 
after a slight pause, and with a very low sigh, “ he nevei 
was in love with me ; and what is more, he had the frank 
ness to tell me so 1 ” 

And yet you” — 

“Married him — yes!” said my mother, raising the 
softest and purest eyes that ever lover could have wished 
to read his fate in — “ Yes, for the ol^l love was hopeless. 
I knew that I could make him happy. I knew that he 
would love me at last, and he does so I My son, your 
father, loves me I ” 

As she spoke, there came a blush as innocent as virgin 
ever knew, to my mother’s smooth cheek ; and she looked 
so fair, so good, and still so young, all the while, that you 
would have said that either Dusius, the Teuton fiend, or 
Nock, the Scandinavian sea-imp, from whom the learned 
assure us we derive our modern Daimones, “ The Deuce, 
and Old Nick, had indeed possessed my father, if he had 
not learned to love such a creature. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


I pressed her hand to my lips, but my heart was toe 
full to speak for a moment or so ; and then I partially 
changed the subject. 

“Well, and this rivalry estranged them more? And 
who was the lady ? ” 

“ Ycur father never told me, and I never asked,” said 
my mother simply. “But she was very different from 
me, I know. Yery accomplished, very beautiful, very 
high-born.” 

“ For all that, my father was a lucky man to escape 
her. Pass on. What did the Captain do ? ” 

“Why, about that time your grandfather died, and 
shortly after an aunt, on the mother’s side, who was rich 
and saving, died, and unexpectedly left them each sixteen 
thousand pounds. Your uncle, with his share, bought 
back, at an enormous price, the old castle and some land 
round it, which they say does not bring him in three hun- 
dred a year. With the little that remained, he purchased 
a commission in the army ; and the brothers met no more 
till last w'eek, when Roland suddenly arrived.” 

“ He did not marry this accomplished young lady ? ” 

“ No ! but he married another, and is a widower.” 

“ Why, he was as inconstant as my father ; and I am 
sure without so good an excuse. How was that ? ” 

“ I don’t know. He says nothing about it.” 

“ Has he any children ? ” 

“ Two, a son — by the bye, you must never speak about 
him. Your uncle briefly said, when I asked him what 
was his family, ‘A girl, ma’am. I had a son, but — ’ 


100 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ ' He is dead,’ cried your father, in his kind pitying 
voice. 

“‘Dead to me, brother — and you will never mention 
his name 1 ’ You should have seen how stern your uncle 
looked. I was terrified.” 

“But the girl — why did not he bring her here ? ” 

“ She is still in France, but he talks of going over for 
her ; and we have half promised to visit them both in 
Cumberland. But, bless me I is that twelve ? and the 
posset quite cold I ” 

“ One word more, dearest mother — one word. My 
father’s book — is he still going on with it ?” 

“ Oh yes, indeed I ” cried my mother, clasping her 
hands ; “ and he must read it to you, as he does to me — 
you will understand it so well. I have always been so 
anxious that the world should know him, and be proud 
of him as we are — so — so anxious ! — for, perhaps, Sisty, 
if he had married that great lady, he would have roused 
himself, been more ambitious — and I could only make 
him happy, I could not make him great 1 ” 

“ So he has listened to you at last ? ” 

“ To me ! ” said my mother, shaking her head and 
smiling gently. “No, rather to your Uncle Jack, who, 
1 am happy to say, has at length got a proper hold over 
him.” 

“A proper hold, my dear mother I Pray bevare of 
Uncle Jack, or we shall all be swept into a coal-mine, or 
explode with a grand national comp&ny for making gun- 
powder out of tea-leaves 1 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


lOJ 


“ Wicked child I ’’ said my mother, laughing ; and then, 
as she took up her candle and lingered a moment while I 
wound my watch, she said musingly, — “ Yet Jack is very, 
very clever, — and if for your sake we could make a for- 
tune, Sisty 1 ” 

“ You frighten me out of my wits, mother 1 You are 
not in earnest?” 

“ And if my brother could be the means of raising him 
in the world I ” — 

“ Your brother would be enough to sink all the ships 
in the Channel, ma’am,” said I, quite iiTeverently. I was 
shocked before the words were well out of my mouth ; 
and throwing my arms round my mother’s neck, I kissed 
away the pain I had inflicted.” 

When I was left alone, and in my own little crib, in 
which my slumber had ever been so soft and easy, — I 
might as well have been lying upon cut straw. I tossed 
to and fro — I could not sleep. I rose, threw on my 
dressing-gown, lighted my candle, and sat down by the 
table near the window. First I thought of the unfinished 
outline of my father’s youth, so suddenly sketched before 
me. I filled up the missing colors, and fancied the pic- 
ture explained all that had often perplexed my conjectures. 
I comprehended, I suppose, by some secret sympathy in 
my own nature, (for experience in mankind could have 
taught me little enough,) how an ardent, serious, inquiring 
mind — struggling into passion under the load of know- 
ledge, had, with that stimulus, sadly and abruptly with- 
jrawn, sunk into the quiet of passive, aimless studv. 1 
9 * 


102 


THE CAXTONS: 


comprehended how, in the indolence of a happy but ua- 
irnpassioned marriage, with a companion so gentle, so 
provident and watchful, yet so little formed to rouse, and 
task, and fire an intellect naturally calm and meditative, 
— years upon years had crept away in the learned idleness 
of a solitary scholar. I comprehended, too, how gradu- 
ally and slowly, as my father entered that stage of middle 
life, when all men are most prone to ambition — the long- 
silenced whispers were heard again ; and the mind, at last 
escaping from the listless weight which a baffled and dis- 
appointed heart had laid upon it, saw once more, fair as 
in youth, the only true mistress of Genius — Fame. 

Oh I how I sympathized, too, in my mother’s gentle 
triumph I Looking over the past, I could see, year after 
year, how she had stolen more and more into my father’s 
heart of hearts — how what had been kindness had grown 
into love, — how custom and habit, and the countless links 
in the sweet charities of home, had supplied that sym- 
pathy with the genial man which had been missed at first 
by the lonely scholar. 

Next I thought of the grey, eagle-eyed old soldier, 
with his ruined tower and barren acres, — and saw before 
me his proud, prejudiced, chivalrous boyhood, gliding 
through the ruins or poring over the mouldy pedigree. 
And this son, so disowned, — for what dark offence ? — an 
awe crept over me. And this girl — his ewe-lamb — his 
all — was she fair ? had she blue eyes like my mother, or 
a high Roman nose and beetle brows like Captain 
Roland ? I mused, and mused, and mused — and the 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


103 


caudle went out — and the moonlight grew broader and 
stiller ; till at last I was sailing in a balloon with Uncle 
J ack, and had just tumbled into the Red Sea — w&en the 
well-known voice of nurse Primmins restored me to life 
with a “ God bless my heart I the boy has not been in bed 
all this ’varsal night I ” 


CHAPTER ly. 

As soon as I was dressed I hastened down stairs, for I 
longed to revisit my old haunts — the little plot of garden 
I had sown with anemones and cresses ; the walk by the 
peach wall ; the pond wherein I had angled for roach 
and perch. 

Entering the hall, I discovered my Uncle Roland in a 
great state of embarrassment. The maid-servant was 
scrubbing the stones at the hall-door ; she was naturally 
plump, — and it is astonishing how much more plump a 
female becomes when she is on all-fours I — the maid-ser- 
vant, then, was scrubbing the stones, her face turned from 
the captain ; and the captain, evidently meditating a 
sortie, stood ruefully gazing at the obstacle before him 
and hemming aloud. Alas, the maid-servant was deaf I 
I stopped, curious to see how Uncle Roland would ex- 
tricate himself from the dilemma. 

Einding that his hems were in vain, my uncle made 
himself as small as he could, and glided close to the left 


104 


THE OAXTONS. 


Df the wall : at that instant, the maid turned abruptly 
round towards the right, and completely obstructed, by 
this manoeuvre, the slight crevice through which hope 
had dawned on her captive. My uncle stood stock-still, 
and, to say the tiuth, he could not have stirred an inch 
without coming into personal contact with the rounded 
charms which blockaded his movements. My uncle took 
off his hat and scratched his forehead in great perplexity. 
Presently, by a slight turn of the flanks, the opposing 
party, while leaving him an opportunity of return, en- 
tirely precluded all chance of egress in that quarter. My 
uncle retreated in haste, and now presented himself to 
the right wing of the enemy. He had scarcely done so 
when, without looking behind her, the blockading party 
shoved aside the pail that crippled the range of her ope- 
rations, and so placed it that it formed a formidable bar- 
ricade, which my uncle’s cork leg had no chance of sur- 
mounting. Therewith Captain Roland lifted his eyes 
appealingly to heaven, and I heard him distinctly eja- 
culate — 

“ Would to heaven she were a creature in breeches 1” 

But happily at this moment the maid-servant turned 
her head sharply round, and, seeing the captain, rose in 
an instant, moved away the pail, and dropped a fright- 
ened curtsey. 

My Uncle Roland touched his hat, “ I beg you a thou- 
sand pardons, my good girl,” said he ; and, with half a 
bow, he slid into the open air. 

“You have a soldier’s politeness, uncle,” said I, tuck- 
ing my arm into Captain Roland’s. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


105 


“ Tush, my boy,” said he, smiling seriously, and color- 
ing up to the temples; “tush, say a gentleman’s I To 
us, sir, every woman is a lady, in right of her sex.” 

N ow, I had often occasion later to recall that aphorism 
of my uncle’s ; and it served to explain to me how a man, 
so prejudiced on the score of family pride, never seemed 
to consider it an offence in my father to have married a 
woman whose pedigree was as brief as my dear mother’s. 
Had she been a Montmorenci, my uncle could not have 
been more respectful and gallant than he was to that 
meek descendant of the Tibbetses. He held, indeed, 
which I never knew any other man, vain of family, ap- 
prove or support, — a doctrine deduced from the following 
syllogisms ; 1st, that birth was not valuable in itself, but 
as a transmission of certain qualities which descent from 
a race of warriors should perpetuate, viz., truth, courage, 
honor; 2dly, That, whereas from the woman’s side we 
derive our more intellectual faculties, from the man’s we 
derive our moral ; a clever and witty man generally has 
a clever and witty mother ; a brave and honorable man, 
a brave and honorable father. Therefore, all the quali- 
ties which attention to race should perpetuate are the 
manly qualities traceable only from the falher’s side. 
Again, he held that while the aristocracy have higher 
and more chivalrous notions, the people generally have 
shrewder and livelier ideas. Therefore, to prevent gen- 
tlemen from degenerating into complete dunderheads, an 
admixture with the people, provided always it was on the 
female aide, was not only excusable, but expedient ; and, 


106 


THE CAXTONS: 


finally, my uncle held that, whereas a man is a rude, 
coarse, sensual animal, and requires all manner of associ- 
ations to dignify and refine him, women are so naturally 
susceptible of everything beautiful in sentiment, and gene- 
rous in purpose, that she who is a true woman is a fit 
peer for a king. Odd and preposterous notions, no 
doubt, and capable of much controversy, so far as the 
doctrine of race (if that be any way tenable) is concerned ; 
but then the plain fact is, that my Uncle Roland was as 
eccentric and contradictory a gentleman — as — as — why, 
as you and I are, if we once venture to think for our- 
selves. 

“ Well, sir, and what profession are you meant for?” 
asked my uncle — “ not the army, I fear ? ” 

“I have never thought of the subject, uncle.” 

“ Thank heaven,” said Captain Roland, “ we have 
never yet had a lawyer in the family ! nor a stock-broker, 
nor a tradesman — aheml” 

I saw that my great ancestor the printer suddenly rose 
up in that hem. 

“ Why, uncle, there are honorable men in all callings.” 

“ Certainly, sir. But in all callings honor is not tlie 
first principle of action.” 

‘‘ But it may be, sir, if a man of honor pursue it I 
There are some soldiers who have been great rascals ! ” 

My uncle looked posed, and his black brows met 
thoughtfully. 

“You are right, boy, I dare say,” he answered some- 
what mildly. “But do you think that it ought to gire 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


lOl 

me as much pleasure to look on my old ruined tower, if 
I knew it had been bought by some herring-dealer, like 
the first ancestor of the Poles, as I do now, when I kno y 
it was given to a knight and gentleman (who traced his 
descent from an Anglo-Dane in the time of King Alfred), 
for services done in Aquitaine and Gascony, by Henry 
the Plantagenet ? And do you mean to tell me that I 
should have been the same man if I had not from a boy 
associated that old tower with all ideas of what its owners 
were, and should be, as knights and gentlemen ? Sir, you 
would have made a different being of me if at the head 
of my pedigree you had clapped a herring-dealer ; though 
I dare say the hemng-dealer might have been as good a 
man as ever the Anglo-Dane was. God rest him I ” 

“And for the same reason, I suppose, sir, that you 
think my father never would have been quite the same 
being he is, if he had not made that notable discovery 
touching our descent from the great William Caxton, the 
printer.” 

My uncle bounded as if he had been shot ; bounded so 
incautiously, considering the material of which one leg 
was composed, that he would have fallen into a straw- 
berry-bed if I had not caught him by the arm. 

“ Why, you — you — you young jackanapes,” cried the 
captain, shaking me off as soon as he had regained his 
equilibrium. “ You do not mean to inherit that infamous 
crotchet my brother has got into his head ? You do not 
mean to exchange Sir William de Caxton, who fought 
and fell at Bosworth, for the mechanic who sold black- 
’ettcr pamphlets in the Sanctuary at Westminster ? ” 


108 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ That depends on the evidence, uncle I ” 

“ No, sir ; like all noble truths, it depends upon faith. 
Men, now-a-days,” continued my uncle, with a look of 
ineffable disgust, “ actually require that truths should be 
proved.’' 

“It is a sad conceit on their part, no doubt, my dear 
uncle. But till a truth is proved, how can we know that 
it is a truth ? ” 

I thought that in that very sagacious question I had 
effectually caught my uncle. Not I. He slipped through 
it like an eel. 

“ Sir,” said he, “ whatever, in Truth, makes a man’s 
heart warmer, and his soul purer, is a belief, not a know- 
ledge. Proof, sir, is a handcuff — belief is a wing ! Want 
proof as to an ancestor in the reign of King Richard I Sir, 
you cannot even prove to the satisfaction of a logician 
that you are the son of your own father. Sir, a religious 
man does not want to reason about his religion — religion 
is not mathematics. Religion is to be felt, not proved. 
There are a great many things in the religion of a good 
man which are not in the catechism. Proof 1 ” continued 
my uncle, growing violent — “ Proof, sir, is a low, vulgar, 
levelling, rascally Jacobin — Belief is a loyal, generous, 
chivalrous gentleman ! No, no — prove what you please, 
you shall never rob me of one belief that has made 
me ” 

“ The finest-hearted creature that ever talked non- 
sense,” said my father, who came up, like Horace’s deity, 
at the right moment. “ What is it you must believe in, 
jrother, no matter what the proof against you ’( ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. a09 

Mj uncle was silent, and with great energy dug tho 
point of his cane into the gravel. 

“ He will not believe in our great ancestor the print er,^^ 
said I, maliciously. 

My father’s calm brow was overcast hi a moment. 

Brother,” said the captain, loftily, “you have a right 
to your own ideas, but you should take care how they 
contaminate your child.” 

“ Contaminate I ” said my father ; and for the first time 
I saw an angry sparkle flash from his eyes, but he 
checked himself on the instant : “ change the word, my 
dear brother.” 

“ No, sir, I will not change it I To belie the records 
of the family I ” 

“ Records 1 A brass plate in a village church against 
all the books of the College of Arms I ” 

“ To renounce your ancestor, a knight who died in the 
field I ” 

“ For the worst cause that man ever fought for I ” 

“ On behalf of his king 1 ” 

“ Who had murdered his nephews I ” 

“A knight I with our crest on his helmet.” 

“And no brains underneath it, or he would never have 
had them knocked out for so bloody a villain I ” 

“A rascally, drudging, money-making printer ! ” 

“ The wise and glorious introducer of the art that has 
enlightened a world. Prefer for an ancestor, to one 
whom scholar and sage never name but in homage, a 
worthless, obscure, jolter-headed booby in mail, whose 
I. — 10 


no 


THE CAXTONS; 


only lecord to men is a brass plate in a church in a 
village I ” 

My uncle turned round perfectly livid. “ Enough, sir 1 
enough I I am insulted sufficiently. I ought to have ex- 
pected it. I wish you and your son a very good day.’^ 

My father stood aghast. The Captain was hobbling 
off to the iron gate ; in another moment he would have 
been out of our precincts. I ran up and hung upon him. 
“Uncle, it is all my fault. Between you and me, I am 
quite of your side ; pray forgive us both. What could I 
have been thinking of, to vex you so ? And my father, 
whom your visit has made so happy I ” 

My uncle paused, feeling for the latch of the gate. My 
father had now come up, and caught his hand. “ What 
are all the printers that ever lived, and all the books they 
ever printed, to one wrong to thy fine heart, brother Ro- 
land ? Shame on me I A bookman’s weak point, you 
know I It is very true — I should never have taught the 
boy one thing to give you pain, brother Roland ; — though 
I don’t remember,” continued my father, with a perplexed 
look, “that I ever did teach it him either 1 Pisistratus, 
as you value my blessing, respect as your ancestor. Sir 
William de Caxton, the hero of Bosworth. Come, come, 
brother I ” 

“I am an old fool,” said uncle Roland, “whichever 
way we look at it. Ah, you young dog ! you are laugh- 
ing at us both I ” 

“I have ordered breakfast on the lawn,” said my 
mother, coming out from the porch, with her cheerful 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


Hi 


Bmile on her lips ; “ and I think the devil will be done to 
your liking to-day, brother Roland.” 

‘‘We have had enough of the devil already, my love,” 
said my father, wiping his forehead. 

So, while the birds sang overhead, or hopped familiarly 
across the sward for the crumbs thrown forth to them, 
while the sun was still cool in the east, and the leaves yet 
rustled with the sweet air of morning, we all sat down to 
our table, with hearts as reconciled to each other, and as 
peaceably disposed to thank God for the fair world around 
us, as if the river had never run red through the field of 
Bosworth, and the excellent Mr. Caxton had never set 
all mankind by the ears with an irritating invention, a 
thousand times more provocative of our combative 
tendencies than the blast of the trumpet and the gleam 
of the banner! 


CHAPTER y. 

“Brother,” said Mr. Caxton, “I will walk with you 
to the Roman encampment.” 

The Captain felt that this proposal was meant as the 
greatest peace-offering my father could think of ; for, 1st, 
it was a very long walk, and my father detested long 
walks ; 2ndly, it was the sacrifice of a whole day^s labor 
at the Great Work. And yet, with that quick sensibility, 
which only the generous possess, Uncle Roland accepted 


112 


THE CAXTONS : 


at once the proposal. If he had not done so, my father 
would have had a heavier heart for a month to come. 
And how could the Great Work have got on while the 
author was every now and then disturbed by a twinge of 
remorse ? 

Half an hour after breakfast, the brothers set off arm- 
in-arm ; and I followed, a little apart, admiring how 
sturdily the old soldier got over the ground, in spite of 
the cork leg. It was pleasant enough to listen to their 
conversation, and notice the contrasts between these two 
eccentric stamps from Dame Nature’s ever- variable 
mould, — Nature who casts nothing in stereotype, for I do 
believe that not even two fleas can be found identically 
the same. ♦ 

My father was not a quick or minute observer of rural 
beauties. He had so little of the organ of locality, that 
I suspect he could have lost his way in his own garden : 
but the Captain was exquisitely alive to external impres- 
sions — not a feature in the landscape escaped him. At 
every fantastic gnarled pollard he halted to gaze ; his 
eye followed the lark soaring up from his feet ; when a 
fresher air came from the hill-top, his nostrils dilated, as 
if voluptuously to inhale its delight. My father, with all 
his learning, and though his study had been in the stores 
of all languages, was very rarely eloquent. The Captain 
had a glow and a passion in his words which, what with 
his deep, tremulous voice, and animated gestures, gave 
something poetic to half of what he uttered. In every 
sentence of Roland’s, in every tone of his voice, and every 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


113 


play of his face, there was some outbreak of pride ; but, 
unless you set him on his hobby of that great ancestor 
the printer, my father had not as much pride as a homoeo- 
pathist could have put into a globule. He was not proud 
even of not being proud. Chafe all his feathers, and still 
you could rouse but a dove. My father was slow and 
mild, my uncle quick and fiery ; my father reasoned, my 
uncle imagined ; my father was very seldom wrong, my 
uncle never quite in the right ; but, as my father once said 
of him, “ Roland beats about the bush till he sends out 
the very bird that we went to search for. He is never in 
the wrong without suggesting to us what is the right.’’ 
All in my uncle was stern, rough, and angular ; all in my 
father was sweet, polished, and rounded into a natural 
grace. My uncle’s character cast out a multiplicity of 
shadows, like a Gothic pile in a northern sky. My father 
stood serene in the light, like a Greek temple at mid-day 
in a southern clime. Their persons corresponded with 
their natures. My uncle’s high aquiline features, bronzed 
hue, rapid fire of eye, and upper lip that always quivered, 
were a notable contrast to my father’s delicate profile, 
quiet, abstracted gaze, and the steady sweetness that 
rested on his musing smile. Roland’s forehead was 
singularly high, and rose to a peak in the summit where 
phrenologists place the organ of veneration, but it was 
narrow, and deeply furrowed. Augustine’s might be as 
high, but then soft, silky hair waved carelessly over it — 
concealing its height, but not its vast breadth — on which 
not a wrinkle was visible. And yet, withal, there was a 
10 * H 


114 


THE C AXTONS : 


great family likeness between the two brothers. When 
some softer sentiment subdued him, Koland caught the 
very look of Augustine ; when some high emotion ani- 
mated my father, you might have taken him for Roland. 
I have often thought since, in ^e greater experience of 
mankind which life has afforded me, that if, in early years, 
their destinies had been exchanged — if Roland had taken 
to literature, and my father had been forced into action 

— that each would have had greater worldly success. 
For Roland’s passion and energy would have given im- 
mediate and forcible effect to study ; he might have been 
an historian or poet. It is not study alone that produces 
a writer ; it is intensity. In the mind, as in yonder 
chimney, to make the fire burn hot and quick, you must 
narrow the draught. Whereas, had my father been forced 
into the practical world, his calm depth of comprehension, 
his clearness of reason, his general accuracy in such 
notions as he once entertained and pondered over, joined 
to a temper that crosses and losses could never ruffle, and 
utter freedom from vanity and self-love, from prejudice 
and passion, might have made him a very wise and en- 
lightened counsellor in the great affairs of life — a lawyer, 
a diplomatist, a statesman, for what I know, even a great 
general — if his tender humanity had not stood in the way 
of his military mathematics. 

Rut, as it was — with his slow pulse never stimulated by 
action, and too little stirred by even scholarly ambition 

— my father’s mind went on widening and widening, till 
the circle was lost in the great ocean of contemplation ; 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


115 


and Roland’s passionate energy, fretted into fever bj 
every let and hindrance, in the struggle with his kind — 
and narrowed more and more as it was curbed within the 
channels of active discipline and duty — missed its duo 
career altogether ; and what might have been the poet, 
contracted into the humorist. 

Yet, who that had ever known ye, could have wished 
you other than ye were — ^ye guileless, affectionate, honest, 
simple creatures ? simple both, in spite of all the learning 
of the one, all the prejudices, whims, irritabilities, and 
crotchets of the other ? There you are — seated on the 
height of the old Roman camp, with a volume of the 
Stratagems of Polyoenus (or is it Frontinus ?) open on 
my father’s lap ; the sheep grazing in the furrows of the 
circumvallations ; the curious steer gazing at you where 
it halts in the space whence the Roman cohorts glittered 
forth. And your boy-biographer standing behind you 
with folded arms; and, — as the scholar read or the 
soldier pointed his cane to each fancied post in the war, 
— filling up the pastoral landscape with the eagles of 
Agricola and the scythed cars of Boadicea I 


116 


THE CAXTONS: 


CHAPTER YI. 

“ It is never the same two hours together in this coun- 
try,” said my Uncle Roland, as, after dinner, or rather 
after dessert, we joined my mother in the drawing-room. 

Indeed, a cold drizzling rain had come on within the 
last two hours ; and, though it was J uly, it was as chilly 
as if it had been October. My mother whispered to me, 
and I went out ; in ten minutes more, the logs (for we 
live in a wood country) blazed merrily in the grate. Why 
could not my mother have rung the bell, and ordered the 
servant to light a fire ? My dear reader. Captain Roland 
was poor, and he made a capital virtue of economy. 

The two brothers drew their chairs near to the hearth, 
my father at the left, my uncle at the right ; and I and 
my mother sat down to “ Fox and geese.” 

Coffee came in — one cup for the Captain, for the rest 
of the party avoided that exciting beverage. And on 
that cup was a picture of — His Grace the Duke of 
Wellington 1 

During our visit to the Roman camp, my mother had 
borrowed Mr. Squills^ chaise, and driven over tc our 
market-town, for the express purpose of greeting the 
Captain’s eyes with the face of his old chief. 

My uncle changed color, rose, lifted my mother’s hand 
to his lips, and sat himself down again in silence. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


117 


“I have heard,” said the Captain after a pause, “that 
the Marquis of Hastings, who is every inch a soldier and 
a gentleman — and that is saying not a little, for ho 
measures seventy-five inches from the crown to the sole — 
when he received Louis XYIII. (then an exile) at Don- 
nington, fitted up his apartments exactly like those hia 
majesty had occupied at the Tuileries. It was a kingly 
attention (my Lord Hastings, you know, is sprung from 
the Plantagenets), a kingly attention to a king. It cost 
some money and made some noise. A woman can show 
the same royal delicacy of heart in this bit of porcelain, 
and so quietly, that we men all think it a matter of course, 
brother Austin.” 

“You are such a worshipper of women, Roland, that 
it is melancholy to see you single. You must marry 
again ! ” 

My uncle first smiled, then frowned, and lastly sighed 
somewhat heavily. 

“Your time will pass slowly in your old tower, poor 
brother,” continued my father, “ with only your little girl 
for a companion.” 

“And the past I” said my uncle; “the past, that 
mighty world” — 

“Do you still read your old books of chivalry, Frois- 
sart and the Chronicles, Palmerin of England and Amadis 
of Gaul?” 

“Why,” said my uncle, reddening, “I have tried to 
improve myself with studies a little more substantial. 
And,” (he added with a sly smile) “ there will be your 
great book for many a long winter to come,” 


118 


THE CAXTONS : 


“ Um ! said my father, bashfully. 

“ Do you know,” quoth my uncle, '‘that Dame Prim- 
mins is a very intelligent woman ; full of fancy, and a 
capital story-teller ? ” 

“ Is not she, uncle ? ” cried I, leaving my fox in the 
corner. “ Oh, if you could hear her tell the tale of Eang 
Arthur and the Enchanted Lake, or the Grim White 
Woman I ” 

“ I have already heard her tell both,” said my uncle. 

“ The deuce you have, brother I My dear, we must 
look to this. These captains are dangerous gentlemen in 
an orderly household. Pray, where could you have had 
the opportunity of such private communications with Mrs. 
Primmins ? ” 

“ Once,” said my uncle, readily, “ when I went into her 
room, while she mended my stock ; and once” — he stopped 
short, and looked down. 

“ Once when ? — out with it.” 

“When she was warming my bed,” said my uncle, in a 
half-whisper. 

“ Dear I ” said my mother innocently, “ that^s how the 
sheets came by that bad hole in the middle. I thought 
it was the warming-pan. ” 

“ I am quite shocked I ” faltered my uncle. 

“ You well may be,” said my father. “A woman who 
has been heretofore above all suspicion I But come,” he 
said, seeing that my uncle looked sad, and was no doubt 
casting up the probable price of twice six yards of Hol- 
land — “but come, you were always a famous rhapsoditn 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


119 


or tale-teller yourself. Come, Roland, let us have some 
story of your own ; something which your experience has 
left strong in your impressions.^’ 

“ Let us first have the candles,” said my mother. 

The candles were brought, the jurtains let down — we 
all drew our chairs to the hearth. But, in the interval, 
my uncle had sunk into a gloomy reverie ; and, when we 
called upon him to begin, he seemed to shake off with 
effort some recollections of pain. 

“You ask me,” he said, “to tell you some tale which 
my own experience has left deeply marked in my im- 
pressions — I will tell you one apart from my own life, 
but which has often haunted me. It is sad and strange, 
ma’am.” 

“ Ma’am, brother ? ” said my mother reproachfully, 
letting her small hand drop upon that which, large and 
sunburnt, the Captain waved towards her as he spoke. 

“Austin, you have married an angel I ” said my uncle , 
and he was, I believe, the only brother-in-law who ever 
inade so hazardous an assertion. 


120 


THE OAXTONS: 


CHAPTER VII. 

MY UNCLE ROLAND’S TALE. 

*‘It was in Spain, no matter where or how, that il 
was my fortune to take prisoner a French officer of tha 
same rank that I then held — a lieutenant ; and there wai 
BO much similarity in our sentiments, that we became inti- 
mate friends — the most intimate friend I ever had, sister, 
out of this dear circle. He was a rough soldier, whom 
the world had not well treated ; but he never railed at 
the world, and maintained that he had had his deserts. 
Honor was his idol, and the sense of honor paid him for 
the loss of all else. 

“We were both at that time volunteers in a foreign 
service — in that worst of service, civil war, — he on one 
side, I on the other, — both, perhaps, disappointed in the 
cause we had severally espoused. There was something 
similar, too, in our domestic relationships. He had a son 
— a boy — who was all in life to him, next; to his country 
and his duty. I, too, had then such a son, though of 
fewer years.” (The Captain paused an instant: we ex- 
changed glances, and a stifling sensation of pain and sus- 
pense was felt by all his listeners) “We were accus- 
tomed, brother, to talk of these children — to picture their 
future, to compare our hopes and dreams. We hoped 
and dreamed alike. A short time sufficed to establish 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


121 


this confidence. My prisoner was sent to head-quarters, 
and soon afterwards exchanged. 

“ We met no more till last year. Being then at Paris, 
I impiired for my old friend, and learned that he was liv- 
ing at R , a few miles from the capital. I went to 

visit him. I found his house empty and deserted. That 
very day he had been led to prison, charged with a ter- 
rible crime. I saw him in that prison, and from his own 
lips learned his story. His son had been brought up, as 
he fondly believed, in the habits and principles of honor- 
able men ; and, having finished his education, came to 
reside with him at R . The young man was accus- 

tomed to go frequently to Paris. A young Frenchman 
loves pleasure, sister ; and pleasure is found at Paris 
The father thought it natural, and stripped his age of 
some comforts to supply luxuries to the son’s youth. 

“ Shortly after the young man’s arrival, my friend per- 
ceived that he was robbed. Moneys kept in his bureau 
were abstracted he knew not how, nor could guess by 
whom. It must be done in the night. He concealed 
himself, and watched. He saw a stealthy figure glide in, 
he saw a false key applied to the lock — he started for- 
ward, seized the felon, and recognised his son. What 
should the father have done ? I do not ask you, sister 1 
I ask these men, son and father, I ask you.” 

‘‘Expelled him the house,” cried I. 

“ Hone his duty, and reformed the unhappy wretch,” 
^ said my father. “Wemo repenth turpisaimus semper 
fuit — No man is wholly bad all at once.” 

I. — 11 


122 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ The father did as you would have advised, brother. 
He kept the youth ; he remonstrated with him ; he did 
more — he gave him the key of the bureau. ‘ Take what 
I have to give,’ said he; ‘I would rather be a beggar 
than know my son a thief.’” 

“ Right : and the youth repented, and became a good 
man ? ” exclaimed my father. 

Captain Roland shook his head. “The youth pro- 
mised amendment, and seemed penitent. He spoke of 
the temptations of Paris, the gaming-table, and what not. 
He gave up his daily visits to the capital. He seemed 
to apply to study. Shortly after this, the neighborhood 
was alarmed by reports of night robberies on the road. 
Men, masked and armed, plundered travellers, and even 
broke into houses. 

“ The police were on the alert. One night an old bro- 
ther officer knocked at my friend’s door. It was late : 
the veteran (he was a cripple, by the way, like myself — 
strange coincidence !) was in bed. He came down in 
haste, when his servant woke, and told him that his old 
friend, wounded and bleeding, sought an asylum under his 
roof. The wound, however, was slight. The guest had 
been attacked and robbed on the road. The next morn- 
ing the proper authority of the town was sent for. The 
plundered man described his loss — some billets of five 
hundred francs in a pocket-book, on which was em- 
broidered his name and coronet (he was a vicomte). The 
guest stayed to dinner. Late in the forenoon the son 
looked in. The guest started to see him : my friend no* 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


123 


ticed his paleness. Shortly after, on pretence of faint- 
ness, the guest retired to his room, and sent for his host. 

‘ My friend,’ said he, ^can yon do me a favor? — go to 
the magistrate and recall the evidence I have given.’ 

“ ‘ Impossible,’ said the host ‘ What crotchet is 
this ? ’ 

The guest shuddered. *Peste!^ said he : ‘I do not 
wish in my old age to be hard on others. Who knows 
how the robber may have been tempted, and who knows 
what relations he may have — honest men, whom his crime 
would degrade for ever I Good heavens I if detected, it 
is the galleys, the galleys I ’ 

“ ‘And what then ? — the robber knew what he braved.’ 

“ ‘ But did his father know it ? ’ cried the guest. 

“A light broke upon my unhappy comrade in arms : he 
caught his friend by the hand — ‘You turned pale at 
my son’s sight — where did you ever see him before ? 
Speak I ’ 

“ ‘ Last night, on the road to Paris. The mask slipped 
aside. Call back my evidence I ’ 

“ ‘ You are mistaken,’ said my friend, calmly. ‘I saw 
my son in his bed, and blessed him, before I went to 
my own.’ 

“ ‘ I will believe you,’ said the guest ; ‘ and never shall 
my hasty suspicion pass my lips — but call back the evi- 
dence.’ 

“ The guest returned to Paris before dusk. The father 
conversed with his son on the subject of his studies ; he 
'ollowed him to his room, waited till he was in bed, and 


124 


THE OAXTONS: 


was then about to retire, when the youth said, ‘Father, 
you have forgotten your blessing.’ 

“ The father went back, laid his hand on the boy’s head, 
and prayed. He was credulous — fathers are so I He 
was persuaded that his friend had been deceived. He 
retired to rest, and fell asleep. He woke suddenly in ths 
middle of the night, and felt (I here quote his words) — 

‘ I felt,’ said he, ‘ as if a voice had awakened me — a voice 
that sa,id “Rise and search.” I rose at once, struck a 
light, and went to my son’s room. The door was locked. 
I knocked once, twice, thrice — no answer. I dared not 
call aloud, lest I should rouse the servants. I went down 
the stairs — I opened the back-door — I passed to the 
stables. My own horse was there, not my son’s. My 
horse neighed ; it was old, like myself — my old charger 
at Mount St. Jean. I stole back, I crept into the shadow 
of the wall by my son’s door, and extinguished my light. 
I felt as if I were a thief myself.’” 

“Brother,” interrupted my mother under her breath, 
“ speak in your own words, not in this wretched father’s. 
I know not why, but it would shock me less.” 

The Captain nodded. 

“Before daybreak, my friend heard the back-door open 
gently; afoot ascended the stair — a key grated in the 
door of a room close at hand — the father glided through 
the dark into that chamber behind his unseen son. 

“ He heard the clink of the tinder-box ; a light was 
struck ; it spread over the room, but he had time to place 
himself behind the window-curtain which was close a; 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


125 


hand. The figure before him stood a moment or so mo- 
tionless, and seemed to listen, for it turned to the right, 
to the left, its visage covered with the black, hideous 
mask which is worn in carnivals. Slowly the mask was 
removed ; could that be his son’s face ? the son of a brave 
man ? — it was pale and ghastly with scoundrel fears ; the 
base drops stood on the brow ; the eye was haggard and 
bloodshot. He looked as a coward looks when death 
stands before him. 

“The youth walked, or rather skulked, to the secre 
taire, unlocked it, opened a secret drawer ; placed within 
it the contents of his pockets and his frightful mask : the 
father approached softly, looked over his shoulder, and 
saw in the drawer the pocket-book embroidered with his 
friend’s name. Meanwhile, the son took out his pistols, 
uncocked them cautiously, and was about also to secrete 
them, when his father arrested his arm. * Robber, the 
use of these is yet to come 1 ’ 

“ The son’s knees knocked together, an exclamation for 
mercy burst from his lips ; but when, recovering the mere 
shock of his dastard nerves, he perceived it was not the 
gripe of some hireling of the law, but a father’s hand 
that had clutched his arm, the vile audacity which knows 
fear only from a bodily cause, none from the awe of shame, 
returned to him. 

“ ‘ Tush, sir,’ he said, ‘ waste not time in reproaches, 
for, I fear, the gens-d^armes are on my track. It is well 
that you are here ; you can swear that I have spent the 
night at home. Unhand me, old man — I have these wit- 
11 * 


126 


THE CAXTONS : 


nesses still to secrete,’ and he pointed to the garments 
wet and bedabbled with the mud of the roads. He had 
scarcely spoken when the walls shook ; there was the 
heavy clatter of hoofs on the ringing pavement without. 

‘ They come ! ’ cried the son. ‘ Off, dotard I save 
your son from the galleys.’ 

“ ‘ The galleys, the galleys I ’ said the father, stagger- 
ing back ; ‘ it is true ’ — he said — ‘ the galleys.’ 

“ There was a loud knocking at the gate. The gens- 
-d'armes surrounded the house. ‘ Open, in the name of 
the law.’ No answer came, no door was opened. Some 
of the gens-d'armes rode to the rear of the house, in 
which was placed the stable-yard. From the window of 
the son’s room, the father saw the sudden blaze of torches, 
the shadowy forms of the men-hunters. He heard the 
clatter of arms as they swung themselves from their 
horses. He heard a voice cry, ‘Yes, this is the robber’s 
grey horse — see, it still reeks with sweat I ’ And behind 
and in front, at either door, again came the knocking, 
and again the shout, ‘ Open, in the name of the law.’ 

“ Then lights began to gleam from the casements of 
the neighboring houses ; then the space filled rapidly 
with curious wonderers startled from their sleep ; the 
world was astir, and the crowd came round to know 
what crime or what shame had entered the old soldier’s 
home. 

“ Suddenly, within, there was heard the report of a 
fire-arm ; and a minute or so afterwards the front-door 
was opened, and the soldier appeared. 


k FAMILY PICTURE. 


12*1 


“‘Enter/ he said to the gens-d^armes : ‘what would 

J'ou ? ^ 

“ ‘We seek a robber who is within your walls.’ 

“ ‘ I know it ; mount and find him ; 1 will lead the 
way. ’ 

“ He ascended the stairs, he threw open his son’s 
room ; the officers of justice poured in, and on the floor 
lay the robber’s corpse. 

“ They looked at each other in amazement. ‘ Take 
what is left you,’ said the father. ‘ Take the dead man 
rescued from the galleys ; take the living man on whose 
hands rests the dead man’s blood ! ’ 

“ I was present at my friend’s trial. The facts had 
become known beforehand. He stood there with his grey 
hair, and his mutilated limbs, and the deep scar on his 
visage, and the cross of the Legion of Honor on his 
breast; and when he had told his tale, he ended with 
these words — ‘ I have saved the son whom I reared for 
France from a doom that would have spared the life to 
brand it with disgrace. Is this a crime ? I give you my 
life in exchange for my son’s disgrace. Does my country 
need a victim ? I have lived for my country’s glory, and 
I can die contented to satisfy its laws ; sure that, if you 
blame me, you will not despise ; sure that the hands that 
give me to the headsman will scatter flowers over my 
grave. Thus I confess all. I, a soldier, look round 
amongst a nation of soldiers ; and in the name of the 
star which glitters on my breast, I dare the Fathers of 
France to condemn me 1 ’’ 


128 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ They acquitted the soldier — at least they gave a 
verdict answering to what in our courts is called ‘justifi- 
able homicide.^ A shout rose in the court which no 
ceremonial voice could still ; the crowd would have borne 
him in triumph to his house, but his look repelled such 
vanities. To his house he returned indeed, and the day 
afterwards they found him dead, beside the cradle in 
which his first prayer had been breathed over his sinless 
child. Now, father and son, I ask you, do you condemn 
that man ? 


CHAPTER VIII. 

My father took three strides up and down the room, 
and then, halting on his hearth, and facing his brother, 
he thus spoke — “ I condemn his deed, Roland 1 At best 
he was but a haughty egotist. I understand why Brutus 
should slay his sons. By that sacrifice he saved his 
country I What did this poor dupe of an exaggeration 
save ? — nothing but his own name. He could not lift the 
Clime from his son’s soul, nor the dishonor from his son’s 
memory. He could but gratify his own vain pride ; and, 
insensibly to himself, his act was whispered to him by the 
fiend that ever whispers to the heart of man, ‘Dread 
men’s opinions more than God’s law I’ Oh, my dear 
brother, what minds like yours should guard against the 
most is not the meanness of evil^it is the evil that takes 


A j- AMII r PICTURE. 


129 


false nobility, by garbing itself in the royal magnificence 
of good.” My uncle walked to the window, opened it, 
looked out a moment, as if to draw in fresh air, closed it 
gently, and came back again to his seat; but during 
the short time the window had been left open, a moth 
flew in. 

“Tales like these,” renewed my father, pityingly — 
“ whether told by some great tragedian, or in thy simple 
style, my brother, — tales like these have their uses: they 
penetrate the heart to make it wiser ; but all «risdom is 
meek, my Roland. They invite us to put the question to 
ourselves that thou hast asked — ‘ Can we condemn this 
man?’ and Reason answers, as I have answered -‘We 

pity the man, we condemn the deed.’ We take care, 

my love I that moth will be in the candle. We whish! 

— whish — ! ” and my father stopped to drive i*way the 
moth. My uncle turned, and taking his handkerchief 
from the lower part of his face, of which he had wished 
to conceal the workings, he flapped away the moth from 
the flame. My mother moved the candles from the moth. 
I tried to catch the moth in my father’s straw-hat. The 
deuce was in the moth ! it baffled us all, now circling 
against the ceiling, now sweeping down at the fatal lights. 
As if by a simultaneous impulse, my father approached one 
candle, my uncle approached the other ; and just as the 
moth was wheeling round and round, irresolute which to 
choose for its funeral pyre, both candles were put out. 
The fire had burned down low in the grate, and in the 


130 


THE CAXTONS. 


sudden dimness my father’s soft sweet voice came forth, 
as if from an invisible being : “We leave ourselves in the 
dark to save a moth from the flame, brother 1 shall we dc 
less for our fellow-men ? Extinguish, oh I humanely ex- 
tinguish the light of our reason, when the darkness moi e 
favors our mercy.” Before the lights were relit, my uncle 
had left the room. His brother followed him ; my mother 
and I drew near to each other and talked in whispers. 


PART FOURTH 


CHAPTER I. 

I WAS always an early riser. Happy the man who is ! 
Every morning, day comes to him with a virgin’s love, 
full of bloom, and purity, and freshness. The youth of 
Nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child. 
I doubt if any man can be called “ old ” so long as he is 
an early riser, and an early walker. And oh. Youth I — 
take my word of it — youth in dressing-gown and slip- 
pers. dawdling over breakfast at noon, is a very decrepit 
ghastly image of that youth which sees the sun blush over 
the mountains, and the dews sparkle upon blossoming 
hedge-rows. 

Passing by my father’s study, I was surprised to see 
the windows unclosed — surprised more, on looking in, to 
see him bending over his books — for I had never before 
known him study till after the morning meal. Students 
are not usually early risers, for students, alas I whatever 
their age, are rarely young. Yes ; the Great Book must 

( 181 ) 


132 


THE CAXTONS: 


be getting ^n in serious earnest. It was no longer dal« 
liance with learning : this was work. 

I passed through the gates into the road. A few of 
the cottages were giving signs of returning life j but it 
tvas not yet the hour for labor, and no “ Good morning, 
sir,” greeted me on the road. Suddenly at a turn, which 
an overhanging beech-tree had before concealed, I came 
full upon my Uncle Roland. 

What I you, sir ? So early ? Hark, the clock is 
striking five 1 ” 

“ Not later I I have walked well for a lame man. It 
must be more than four miles to and back.” 

“ You have been to : not on business ? No soul 

would be up.” 

“ Yes, at inns, there is always some one up. Ostlers 
never sleep I I have been to order my humble chaise and 
pair. I leave you to-day, nephew.” 

Ah, uncle, we have offended you. It was my folly, 
that cursed print — ’ 

“ Pooh I ” said my uncle, quickly. “ Offended me, boy 1 
I defy you 1 ” and he pressed my hand roughly. 

“Yet this sudden determination I It was but yester- 
day, at the Roman Camp, that you planned an excursion 
with my father, to C Castle.” 

“ Never depend upon a whimsical man. I must be in 
London to-night.” 

“ And return to-morrow ? ” 

“ I know not when,” said my uncle, gloomily ; and he 
was silent for some moments. At length, leaning less 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


133 


lightly on my arm, he continued — “ Young man, you have 
pleased me. I love that open, saucy brow of yours, on 
which Nature has written ‘ Trust me.’ I love those 3lear 
eyes, that look one manfully in the face. I must know 
more of you — much of you. You must come and see me 
some day or other in your ancestors’ ruined keep.” 

Come 1 that I will. And you shall show me the old 
tower — ” 

“ And the traces of the outworks 1 ” cried my uncle, 
flourishing his stick. 

“And the pedigree — ” 

“ Ay, and your great-great-grandfather’s armor, which 

he wore at Marston Moor ” 

“Yes, and the brass plate in the church, uncle.” • 

“ The deuce is in the boy I Come here, come here ; 
I’ve three minds to break your head, sir ! ” 

“ It is a pity Somebody had not broken the rascally 
printer’s before he had the impudence to disgrace us by 
having a family, uncle.” 

Captain Roland tried hard to frown, but he could not. 
“ Pshaw I ” said he, stopping, and’ taking snuff. “ Tho 
world of the dead is wide ; why should the ghosts jost>^ 
us ?” 

“We can never escape the ghosts, uncle. They ham t 
us always. We cannot think or act, but the soul of son e 
man, who has lived before, points the way. The dej* i 

never die, especially since ” 

“ Since what, boy ? — you speak well” 

I. -- 12 


134 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ Since our great ancestor introduced printing,” said I, 
majestically. 

My uncle whistled ‘‘ Malbrouk s'en va-t-en guerre,^* 

I had not the heart to plague him further. 

“ Peace I ” said I, creeping cautiously within the circle 
of the stick. 

^‘Nol I forewarn you — ” 

“ Peace I and describe to me my little cousin, your 
pretty daughter — for pretty I am sure she is.” 

“ Peace,” said my uncle, smiling. “ But you must come 
and judge for yourself.” 


CHAPTER II. 

Uncle Roland was gone. Before he went, he was 
closeted for an hour with my father, who then accompanied 
him to the gate ; and we all crowded round him as he 
stepped into his chaise. When the Captain was gone, I 
tried to sound my father as to the cause of so sudden a 
departure. But my father was impenetrable in all that 
related to his brother’s secrets. Whether or not the Cap- 
tain had ever confided to him the cause of his displeasure 
with his son — a mystery which much haunted me — my 
father was mute on that score, both to my mother and 
myself. For two or three days, however, Mr. Caxton 
was evidently unsettled. He did not even take to his 
Great Work, but walked much alone, or accompanied 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


136 


only hy the duck, and without even a book in his hand 
But by degrees the scholarly habits returned to him ; my 
mother mended his pens, and the work went on. 

For my part, left much to myself, especially in the 
mornings, I began to muse restlessly over the future 
Ungrateful that I was, the happiness of home ceased to 
content me. I heard afar the roar of the great world, 
and roved impatient by the shore. 

At length, 'one evening, my father, with some modest 
hums and ha’s, and an unaffected blush on his fair fore- 
head, gratified a prayer frequently urged on him, and read 
me some portions of the Great Work. I cannot express 
the feelings this lecture created — they were something 
akin tp awe. For the design of this book was so immense 
— and towards its execution a learning so vast and various 
had administered — ^that it seemed to me as if a spirit had 
opened to me a new world, which had always been before 
my feet, but which my own human blindness had hitherto 
concealed from me. The unspeakable patience with which 
all these materials had been collected, year after year — 
the ease with which now, by the calm power of genius, 
they seemed of themselves to fall into harmony and system 
the unconscious humility with which the scholar ex- 
posed the stores of a laborious life ; — all combined to 
rebuke my own restlessness and ambition, while they filled 
me with pride in their father, which saved my wounded 
egotism from a pang. Here, indeed, was one of those 
books which embrace an existence ; like the Dictionary 
of Bayle, or the History of Gibbon, or the Fasti Hellenici 


136 


THE CAXTOiNfe: 


of Clinton, it was a book to which thousands of books 
had contributed, only to make the originality of the single 
mind more bold and clear. Into the furnace all vessels 
of gold, of all ages, had been cast ; but from the mould 
came the new coin, with its single stamp. And happily, 
the subject of the work did not forbid to the writer the 
indulgence of his naive, peculiar irony of humor — s ) 
quiet, yet so profound. My father’s book was the “ His- 
tory of Human Error ” It was, therefore, the moral 
history of mankind, told with truth and earnestness, yet 
with an arch, unmalignant smile. Sometimes, indeed, the 
smile drew tears. But in all true humor lies its germ, 
pathos. Oh ! by the goddess Moria or Folly, but he was 
at home in his theme I He viewed man first in the savage 
state, preferring in this the positive accounts of voyagers 
and travellers, to the vague myths of antiquity, and the 
dreams of speculators on our pristine state. From Aus- 
tralia and Abyssinia he drew pictures of mortality una- 
dorned, as lively as if he had lived amongst Bushmen and 
savages all his life. Then he crossed over the Atlantic, 
and brought before you the American Indian, with his 
noble nature, struggling into the dawn of civilization, 
when friend Penn cheated him out of his birthright, and 
the Anglo-Saxon drove him back into darkness. He 
showed both analogy and contrast between this specimen 
of our kind, and others equally apart from the extremes 
of the savage state and the cultured. The Arab in his 
tent, the Teuton in his forests, the Greenlander in his 
boat, the Fin in his reindeer car. Up sprang the lude 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 13*1 

gods of the north, and the resuscitated Druidism, passing 
from its earliest templeless belief into the later corruptions 
of crommell and idol. Up sprang, by their side, the 
Saturn of the Phoenicians, the mystic Budh of India, the 
elementary deities of the Pelasgian, the Naith and Serapis 
of Egypt, the Ormuzd of Persia, the Bel of Babylon, the 
winged genii of the graceful Etruria. How nature and 
life shaped the religion ; how the religion shaped the 
manners ; how, and by what influences, some tribes were 
formed for progress ; how others were destined to remain 
stationary, or be swallowed up in war and slavery by their 
brethren, was told with a precision clear and strong as 
the voice of Fate. Hot only an antiquarian and philolo- 
gist, but an anatomist and philosopher — my father brought 
to bear on all these grave points the various speculations 
involved in the distinction of races. He showed how race 
in perfection is produced, up to a certain point, by ad- 
mixture ; how all mixed races have been the most intel- 
ligent — how, in proportion as local circumstance and 
religious faith permitted the early fusion of different 
tribes, races improved and quickened into the refinements 
of civilization. He tracked the progress and dispersion 
of the Hellenes, from their mythical cradle in Thessaly ; 
and showed how those who settled near the sea-shores, 
and were compelled into commerce and intercourse with 
strangers, gave to Greece her marvellous accomplishments 
in arts and letters — the flowers of the ancient world. 
How others, like the Spartans, dwelling evermore in a 
{•amp, on guard against their neighbors, and rigidly pre* 
12 * 


138 


THE CAXTONS: 


serving- their Dorian purity of extraction, contributed 
neither artists, nor poets, nor philosophers to the golden 
treasure-house of mind. He took the old race of the 
Celts, Cimry, or Cimmerians. He compared the Celt 
who, as in Wales, the Scotch Highlands, in Bretagne, 
and in uncompreheiided Ireland, retains his old character- 
istics and purity of breed, with the Celt, whose blood, 
mixed by a thousand channels, dictates from Paris the 
manners and revolutions of the world. He compared the 
Norman in his ancient Scandinavian home, with that 
wonder of intelligence and chivalry into which he grew, 
fused imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the 
Anglo-Saxon. He compared the Saxon, stationary in 
the land of Horsa, with the colonist and civilizer of the 
globe, as he becomes, when he knows not through what 
channels — French, Flemish, Danish, Welch, Scotch, and 
Irish — he draws his sanguine blood. And out from all 
these speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty 
justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries hope to 
the land of the Cafifre, the hut of the Bushman — that 
there is nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect 
that rejects God’s law — improvement ; that by the same 
principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals 
in its savage state, to the highest after man — viz., ad- 
mixture of race — ^you can elevate into nations of majesty 
and power the outcasts of humanity, now your compas- 
sion or your scorn. But when my father got into the 
marrow of his theme — when, quitting these preliminary 
discussions, he fell pounce amongst the would-be wisdom 


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139 


of the wise ; when he dealt with civilization itself, its 
schools, and porticos, and academies ; when he bared the 
absurdities couched beneath the colleges of the Egyptians, 
and the Symposia of the Greeks ; when he showed that, 
even in their own favorite pursuit of metaphysics, the 
Greeks were children ; and, in their own more practical 
region of politics, the Romans were visionaries and 
bunglers ; — when, following the stream of error through 
the Middle Ages, he quoted the puerilities of Agrippa, 
the crudities of Cardan, and passed, with his calm smile, 
into the salons of the chattering wits of Paris in the 
eighteenth century, oh 1 then his irony was that of Lucian, 
sweetened by the gentle spirit of Erasmus. For not even 
here was my father’s satire of the cheerless and Mephis- 
tophelian school. From this record of error he drew 
forth the grand eras of truth. He showed how earnest 
men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be 
errors. He proved how, in vast cycles, age after age, 
the human mind marches on — like the ocean, receding 
here, but there advancing : how from the speculations of 
the Greek sprang all true philosophy ; how from the in- 
stitutions of the Roman rose all durable systems of 
government; how from the robust follies of the nortli 
came the glory of chivalry, and the modern delicacies of 
honor, and the sweet harmonizing influences of woman. 
He tracked the ancestry of our Sidneys and Bayards from 
the Ilengists, Genserics, and Attilas. Full of all curious 
and quaint anecdote — of original illustration — of those 
niceties of learning which spring from a taste cultivated 


140 


THE CAXTONS: 


to the last exquisite polish — the book amused, and allured, 
and charmed ; and erudition lost its pedantry now in the 
simplicity of Montaigne, now in the penetration of La 
Bruyere. He lived in each time of which he wrote, and 
the time lived again in him. Ah I what a writer of 
romances he would have been, if — if what ? If he had 
had as sad an experience of men’s passions, as he had the 
happy intuition into their humors. But he who would 
see the mirror of the shore, must look where it is cast on 
the river, not the ocean. The narrow stream reflects the 
gnarled tree, and the pausing herd, and the village spire, 
and the romance of the landscape ; but the sea reflects 
only the vast outline of the headland, and the lights of 
the eternal heaven, 


CHAPTER III. 

“ It is Lombard-street to a China orange,” quoth Uncle 
Jack. 

“Are the odds in favor of fame against failure so great? 
You do not speak, I fear, from experience, brother Jack,” 
answered my father, as he stooped down to tickle the 
duck under the left ear. 

“But Jack Tibbets is not an Augustine Caxton. Jack 
Tibbets is not a scholar, a genius, a wond ” 

“ Stop I ” cried my father. 

“After all,” said Mr. Squills, “ though I am no fiat 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


141 


terer, Mr. Tibbets is not far out. That part of your book 
which compares the crania or skulls of the different races, 
is superb. Lawrence or Dr. Prichard could not have 
done the thing more neatly. Such a book must not be 
lost to the world ; and I agree with Mr. Tibbets that you 
should publish as soon as possible.” 

“ It is one thing to write and another to publish,” said 
my father, irresolutely. “When one considers all the 
great men who have published ; when one thinks one is 
going to intrude one’s-self audaciously into the company 
of Aristotle and Bacon, of Locke, of Herder — of all the 
grave philosophers who bend over Nature with brows 
weighty with thought — one may well pause, and ” 

“Pooh!” interrupted Uncle Jack ; “science is not a 
club, it is an ocean : it is open to the cockboat as the 
frigate. One man carries across it a freightage of ingots, 
another may fish there for herrings. Who can exhaust 
the sea ? who say to intellect, ‘ The deeps of philosophy 
are preoccupied ? ’ ” 

“Admirable!” cried Squills. 

“ So it is really your advice, my friends,” said my 
father, who seemed struck by Uncle Jack’s eloquent illus- 
trations, “ that I should desert ray household gods, re- 
move to London, since my own library ceases to supply 
my wants, take lodgings near the British Museum, and 
finish off one volume, at least, incontinently.” 

“It is a duty you owe to your country,” said Uncle 
Jack, solemnly. 

“And to yourself,” urged Squills “One must attend 


142 


THE CAXTONS . 


to the natural evacuations of the brain. Ah I you may 
smile, sir ; but I have observed that if a man has much 
in his head, he must give it vent or it oppresses him ; the 
whole system goes wrong. From being abstracted, he 
grows stupefied. The weight of the pressure affects the 
nerves. I would not even guarantee you from a stroke 
of paralysis.” 

‘‘ Oh, Austin I ” cried my mother tenderly, and throw- 
ing her arms round my father’s neck. 

“ Come, sir, you are conquered,” said I. 

*‘And what is to become of you, Sisty ? ” asked my 
father. “ Do you go with us, and unsettle your mind for 
the university ? ” 

“ My uncle has invited me to his castle ; and in the 
meanwhile I will stay here, fag hard, and take care of 
the duck.” 

“All alone ? ” said my mother. 

“No. All alone ! Why, Uncle Jack will come here 
as often as ever, I hope.” 

Uncle Jack shook his head. 

“ No, my boy — I must go to town with your father. 
You don’t understand these things. I shall see the book- 
sellers for him. I know how these gentlemen are to be 
dealt with. I shall prepare the literary circles for the 
appearance of the book. In short, it is a sacrifice of 
interest, I know, My Journal will suffer. But friend- 
ship and my country’s good before all things.” 

“Dear Jack!” said my mother affectionately. 

“I cannot suffer it,” cried my father. “Yon are mak 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


143 


Ing a good income. You are doing well where yon aie ; 
and as to seeing the booksellers — why, when the work is 
ready, you can come to town for a week, and settle that 
alfair.” 

“ Poor dear Austin,” said Uimle Jack, with an air of 
superiority and compassion. “A week I Sir, the advent 
of a book that is to succeed requires the preparation of 
months. Pshaw ! I am no genius, but I am a practical 
man. I know whaPs what. Leave me alone.” 

But my father continued obstinate, and Uncle Jack at 
last ceased to urge the matter. The journey to fame and 
London was now settled ; but my father would not hear 
of my staying behind. 

No ; Pisistratus must needs go also to town and see 
the world : the duck would take care of itself. 


CHAPTER IV. 

We had taken the precaution to send, the day before, 
to secure our due complement of places — four in all (in- 
cluding one for Mrs. Primmins) — in, or upon, the fast 
family coach called the Sun, which had lately been set up 
for the special convenience of the neighborhood. 

This luminary, rising in a town about seven miles dis- 
tant from us, described at first a very erratic orbit amidst 
Uie contiguous villages, before it finally struck into the 
high-road of enlightenment, and thence performed its 


144 


THE OAXTONS: 


journey, in the full eyes of man, at the majestic pace of 
six miles and a half an hour. My father, with his pock- 
ets full of books, and a quarto of “ Gebelin on the Primi- 
tive World,” for light reading, under his arm ; my mo- 
ther with a little basket, containing sandwiches, and 
biscuits of her own baking ; Mrs. Primmins, with a new 
umbrella purchased for the occasion, and a bird-cage con- 
taining a canary, endeared to her not more by song than 
age, and a severe pip through which she had successfully 
nursed it — and I myself, waited at the gates to welcome 
the celestial visitor. The gardener, with a wheelbarrow 
full of boxes and portmanteaus, stood a little in the van ; 
and the footman, who was to follow when lodgings had 
been found, had gone to a rising eminence to watch the 
dawning of the expected Sun, and apprise us of its ap- 
proach by the concerted signal of a handkerchief fixed to 
a stick. 

The quaint old house looked at us mournfully from all 
its deserted windows. The litter before its threshold and 
in its open hall ; wisps of straw or hay that had been 
used for packing ; baskets and boxes that had been ex- 
amined and rejected ; others, corded and piled, reserved 
to follow with the footman — and the two heated and hur- 
ried serving-women left behind standing half-way between 
house and garden-gate, whispering to each other, and 
looking as if they had not slept for weeks — gave to a 
scene, usually so trim and orderly, an aspect of pathetic 
abandonment and desolation. The Genius of the place 
seemed to reproacli us. I felt the omens were against us. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


145 


and turned my earnest gaze from the haunts behind with 
a sigh, as the coach now drew up with all its grandeur. 
An important personage, who, despite the heat of the 
day, was enveloped in a vast superfluity of belcher, in the 
midst of which galloped a gilt fox, and who, rejoiced in 
the name of “guard,” descended to inform us politely 
that only three places, two inside and one out, were at 
our disposal, the rest having been pre-engaged a fortnight 
before our orders were received. 

Now, as I knew that Mrs. Primmins was indispensable 
to the comforts of my honored parents (the more so, as 
she had once lived in London, and knew all its ways), I 
suggested that she should take the outside seat, and that 
I should perform the journey on foot — a primitive mode 
of transport, which has its charms to a young man with 
stout limbs and gay spirits. The guard’s outstretched 
arm left my mother little time to oppose this proposition, 
to which my father assented with a silent squeeze of the 
hand. And, having promised to join them at a family 
hotel near the Strand, to which Mr. Squills had recom- 
mended them as peculiarly genteel and quiet, and waved 
my last farewell to my poor mother, who continued to 
stretch her meek face out of the window till the coach 
was whirled off in a cloud like one of the Homeric heroes, 
I turned within, to put up a few necessary articles in a 
small knapsack, which I remembered to have seen in the 
lumber-room, and which had appertained to my maternal 
grandfather ; and with that on niy shoulder, and a strong 
staff in m 3 ^ hand, I set oil* towards the great city at as 

I. — 13 K 


146 


THE CAXTONS: 


brisk a pace as if I were only bound to the next Tillage 
Accordingly, about noon I was both tired and hungry ; 
and seeing by the wayside one of those pretty inns yet 
peculiar to England, but which, thanks to the railways, 
will soon be amongst the things before the Flood, I sat 
down at a table under some clipped limes, unbuckled my 
knapsack, and ordered my simple fare with the dignity 
of one who, for the first time in his life, bespeaks his own 
dinner, and pays for it out of his own pocket. 

While engaged on a rasher of bacon and a tankard of 
what the landlord called “ No mistake,” two pedestrians, 
passing the same road which I had traversed, paused, 
cast a simultaneous look at my occupation, and induced 
no doubt by its allurements, seated themselves under the 
same lime-trees, though at the farther end of the table. 
I surveyed the new-comers with the curiosity natural to 
my years. 

The elder of the two might have attained the age of 
thirty, though sundry deep lines, and hues formerly florid 
and now faded, speaking of fatigue, care, or dissipation, 
might have made him look somewhat older than he was. 
There was nothing very prepossessing in his appearance. 
He was dressed with a pretension ill suited to the costume 
appropriate to a foot-traveller. His coat was pinched 
and padded ; two enormous pins, connected by a chain, 
decorated a very stiff stock of blue satin, dotted with 
yellow stars ; his hands were cased in very dingy gloves, 
which had once been straw-colored, and the said hands 
played with a whalebone cane surmounted ))y a formr- 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


141 


dable knob, which gave it the appearance of a “ life-pre- 
server.’^ As he took olf a white napless hat, which he 
wiped with great care and affection with the sleeve of hia 
right arm, a profusion of stiff curls instantly betrayed 
the art of man. Like my landlord’s ale, in that wig there 
was “no mistake it was brought (after the fashion of 
the wigs we see in the popular effigies of George lY. in 
his youth) low over his forehead, and was raised at the 
top. The wig had been oiled, and the oil had imbibed 
no small quantity of dust ; oil and dust had alike left 
their impression on the forehead and cheeks of the wig’s 
proprietor. For the rest, the expression of his face was 
somewhat impudent and reckless, but not without a cer- 
tain drollery in the corners of his eyes. 

The younger man was apparently about my own age, a 
year or two older, perhaps — judging rather from his set 
and sinewy frame than his boyish countenance. And this 
last, boyish as it was, could not fail to demand the atten- 
tion even of the most careless observer. It had not only 
the darkness, but the character of the gipsy face, with 
large brilliant eyes, raven hair, long and wavy, but not 
curling ; the features were aquiline, but delicate, and 
when he spoke he showed teeth dazzling as pearls. It 
was impossible not to admire the singular beauty of the 
countenance ; and yet, it had that expression, at once 
stealthy and fierce, which war with society has stamped 
upon the lineaments of the race of which it re- 
minded me. But, withal, there was somewhat of the 
air of a gentleman in this young wayfarer. His dress 


148 


THE CAXTONS: 


consisted of a black velveteen shooting-jacket, or rathei 
short frock, with a broad leathern strap at the waist, 
loose white trousers, and a foraging cap, which he threw 
carelessly on the table as he wiped his brow. Turning 
round impatiently, and with some haughtiness, from his 
companion, he surveyed me with a quick, observant flash 
of his piercing eyes, and then stretched himself at length 
on the bench, and appeared either to dose or muse, till, 
in obedience to his companion’s orders, the board was 
spread with all the cold meats the larder could supply. 

Beef ! ” said his companion, screwing a pinchbeck 
glass into his right eye. “Beef; — mottled, cowey — 
humph ! Lamb ; — oldish — rawish — muttony — humph I 
Pie; — stalish. Yeal? — no, pork. Ah 1 what will you 
have ? ” 

“ Help yourself,” replied the young man peevishly, as 
he sat up, looked disdainfully at the viands, and, after a 
long pause, tasted first one, then the other, with many 
shrugs of the shoulders and muttered exclamations of dis- 
content. Suddenly he looked up, and called for brandy ; 
and, to my surprise, and I fear admiration, ho drank 
near half a tumblerful of that poison undiluted, with a 
composure that spoke of habitual use. 

“Wrong I” said his companion, drawing the bottle to 
himself, and mixing the alcohol in careful proportions 
with water. “ Wrong ! coats of stomach soon wear out 
with that kind of clothes-brush. Better stick to the 
‘yeasty foam,’ as sweet Will says. That young gentle- 
man sets you a good example,” and therewith the s[>eaker 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


:49 


nodded at me familiarly. Inexperienced as I was, I sur 
miscd at once that it was his intention to make acquaint- 
ance with the neighbor thus saluted. I was not deceived 
“Anything to tempt you, sir ?” asked this social person- 
age after a short pause, and describing a semicircle with 
the point of his knife. 

“ I thank you, sir, but I have dined. ” 

“ What then ? ‘ Break out into a second course of 

mischief,* as the swan recommends — swan of Avon, sir I 
No? ‘Well, then, I charge you with this sup of sack.* 
Are you going far, if I may take the liberty to ask ? ** 

“To London.’* 

“ Oh I ’* said the traveller — while bis young companion 
lifted his eyes ; and I was again struck with their remark- 
able penetration and brilliancy. 

“ London is the best place in the world for a lad of 
spirit. See life there ; ‘ glass of fashion and mould of 
form.* Fond of the play, sir?** 

“I never saw one.** 

“ Possible I ’* cried the gentleman, dropping the handle 
of his knife, and bringing up the point horizontally; 
“ then, young man,** he added solemnly, “ you have — but 
I won’t say what you have to see. I won’t say — no, not 
if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and ex- 
claim with the generous ardor so engaging in youth, ‘ Mr. 
Peacock, these are yours if you will only say what I have 
to see I * ** 

I laughed outright — may I be forgiven for the boast, 
but I had the reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. 

13 * 


150 


THE CAXTONS: 


The youiig man’s face grew dark at the sound : he pushel 
back his plate and sighed. 

“ Why,” continued his friend, “ my companion here, 
who, I suppose, is about your own age, he could tell you 
what a play is — he could tell you what life is. He has 
viewed the manners of the town : ‘ perused the traders,’ 
as the swan poetically remarks. Have you not, my lad, 
eh?” 

Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a 
smile of scoru on his lips — 

“Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like 
poverty, has strange bed-fellows. Ask me what life is 
now, and I say a melo-drama ; ask me what it is twenty 
years hence, and I shall say ” 

“A farce?” put in his comrade. 

“No, a tragedy — or comedy, as Moli^re wrote it.” 

“And how is that ?” I asked, interested and somewhat 
surprised at the tone of my contemporary. 

“ Where the play ends in the triumph of the wittiest 
rogue. My friend here has no chance I ” 

“‘Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,’ hem — yes, Hal 
Peacock may be witty, but he is no rogue.” 

“ That was not exactly my meaning,” said the boy drily. 

“‘A fico for your meaning,’ as the swan says. — Hallo, 

you sir I Bully Host, clear the table, — fresh tumblers 

hot water — sugar — lemon — and the bottle’s out 1 

Smoke, sir ? ” and Mr. Peacock offered me a cigar. 

Upon my refusal, he carefully twirled round a very un 
inviting specimen of some fabulous havannah — moistened 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


15J 


it all over, as a boa-constrictor may do the ox ne prepares 
for deglutition ; bit off one end, and lighting the other 
from a little machine for that purpose which he drew from 
his pocket, he was soon absorbed in a vigorous effort 
(which the damp inherent in the weed long resisted) to 
poison the surrounding atmosphere. Therewith the young 
gentleman, either from emulation or in self-defence, ex- 
tracted from his own pouch a cigar-case of notable 
elegance, — being of velvet, embroidered apparently by 
some fair hand, for “From Juliet” was very legibly 
worked thereon — selected a cigar of better appearance 
than that in favor with his comrade, and seemed quite as 
familiar with the tobacco as he had been with the brandy. 

“ Fast, sir — fast lad that quoth Mr. Peacock, in the 
short gasps which his resolute struggle with his uninviting 
victim alone permitted — “nothing but (puff, puff) your 
true (suck, suck) syl — syl — sylva — does for him. Out, 
by the Lord I ‘the jaws of darkness have devoured it 
up ” and again Mr. Peacock applied to his phosphoric 
machine. This time patience and perseverance succeeded, 
and the heart of the cigar responded by a dull red spark 
(leaving the sides wholly untouched) to the indefatigable 
ardor of its wooer. 

This feat accomplished, Mr. Peacock exclaimed tri- 
umphantly, “And now, what say you, my lads, to a game 
.at cards? — three of us — whist and a dummy — nothing 
better — eh?” As he spoke he produced from his coat 
pocket a red silk handkerchief, a bunch of keys, a night- 
cap, a tooth-brush, a piece of shaving-soap, four lumps 


152 


THE CAXTONS: 


of sugar, the remains of a bnn, a razor, and a pack of 
cards. Selecting the last, and returning its motley ac- 
companiments to the abyss whence they had emerged, he 
turned up, with a jerk, of his thumb and finger, the knave 
of clubs, and placing it on the top of the rest, slapped 
the cards Emphatically on the table. 

“ You are very good, but I don’t know whist,” said I. 
“ Not know whist — not been to a play — not smoke I 
Then pray tell me, young man,” said he majestically, and 
with a frown, “ what on earth you do know I” 

Much consternated by this direct appeal, and greatly 
ashamed of my ignorance of the cardinal points of eru- 
dition in Mr. Peacock’s estimation, I hung my head and 
looked down. 

That’s right,” renewed Mr. Peacock more benignly ; 
“ you have the ingenuous shame of youth. It is promis- 
ing, sir — ‘lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,’ as the 
swan says. Mount the first step, and learn whist — six- 
penny points to begin with.” 

Notwithstanding my newness in actual life, I had had 
the good fortune to learn a little of the way before me, 
by those much-slandered guides called novels — works 
which are often to the inner world w^hat maps are to the 
outer; and sundry recollections of “Gil Bias ’’and the 
“ Vicar of Wakefield ” came athwart me. I had no wish 
to emulate the worthy Moses, and felt that I might not 
have even the shagreen spectacles to boast of in my ne- 
gotiations with this new Mr. Jenkinson. Accordingly, 
shaking my head, I called for my bill. As I took out my 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


153 


purse — knit by my mother — with one gold piece in one 
corner, and sundry silver ones in the other, I saw that 
the eyes of Mr. Peacock twinkled. 

“ Poor spirit, sir I poor spirit, young man I ‘ This ava- 
rice sticks deep,’ as the swan beautifully observes. ‘No- 
thing venture, nothing have.’” 

“ Nothing have, nothing venture,” I returned, plucking 
up spirit. 

“Nothing have I — Young sir, do you doubt my so- 
lidity — my capital — my ‘ golden joys ? ’ ” 

“ Sir, I spoke of myself. I am not rich enough to 
gamble.” 

“ Gamble ! ” exclaimed Mr. Peacock, in virtuous indig- 
nation — “ Gamble I what do you mean, sir ? You Insult 
me ! ” and he rose threateningly, and clapped his white 
hat on his wig. 

“ Pshaw 1 let him alone, Hal,” said the boy contemptu- 
ously. “Sir, if he is impertinent, thrash him.” (This 
was to me.) 

“ Impertinent ! — thrash I ” exclaimed Mr. Peacock, 
waxing very red ; but catching the sneer on his compa- 
nion’s lip, he sat down, and Subsided into sullen silence. 

Meanwhile 1 paid my bill. This duty, rarely a cheer- 
ful one, performed, I looked round for my knapsack, and 
perceived that it was in the boy’s hands. He was very 
coolly reading the address which, in case of accidents, T 

prudently placed on it — “ Pisistratus Caxton, Esq., 

Hotel, Street, Strand.” 


THE CAXTONS: 


lt»4 

I took my knapsack from him, more sarprised at such a 
breach of good manners in a young gentleman who knew 
life so well than I should have been at a similar error on 
the part of Mr. Peacock. He made no apology, but 
nodded farewell, and stretched himself at full length on 
ihe bench. Mr. Peacock, now absorbed in a game of pa- 
tience, vouchsafed no return to my parting salutation, and 
in another moment I was alone on the high-road. My 
thoughts turned long upon the young man I had left : 
mixed with a sort of instinctive compassionate foreboding 
of an ill future for one with such habits, and in such com- 
panionship, I felt an involuntary admiration, less even for 
his good looks than his ease, audacity, and the careless 
superiority he assumed over a comrade so much older 
than himself. 

The day was far gone when I saw the spires of a town 
at which I intended to rest for the night. The horn of a 
coach behind made me turn my head, and, as the vehicle 
passed me, I saw on the outside Mr. Peacock, still strug- 
gling with a cigar — it could scarcely be the same — and 
his young friend stretched on the roof amongst the lug- 
gage, leaning his handsome head on his hand, and appa- 
rently unobservant both of me and every one else 


A FAMILY PICTURE 


155 


CHAPTER V. 

I AM apt — judging egotistically, perhaps, from my own 
experience — i > measure a young man’s choice of what is 
termed practical success in life, by what may seem at first 
two very vulgar qualities; viz., his inquisitiveness and 
his animal vivacity. A curiosity which springs forward 
to examine everything new to his information — a nervous 
activity, approaching to restlessness, which rarely allows 
bodily fatigue to interfere with some object in view — con- 
stitute, in my mind, very profitable stock-in-hand to begin 
the world with. 

Tired as I was, after I had performed my ablutions, 
and refreshed myself in the little coffee-room of the inn 
at which I put up, with the pedestrian’s best beverage, 
familiar and oft-calumniated tea, I could not resist the 
temptation of the broad, bustling street, which, lighted 
with gas, shone on me through the dim windows of the 
coffee-room. I had never before seen a large town, and 
the contrast of the lamp-lit, busy night in the streets, 
with sober, deserted night in the ! anes and fields, struck 
me forciMy. 

I sauntered out, therefore, jostling and jostled, now 
gazing at the windows, now hurried along the tide of 


156 


THE CAXT0N8: 


life, till I found myself before a cookshop, round which 
clustered a small knot of housewives, citizens, and hun- 
gry-looking children. While contemplating this group, 
and marvelling how it comes to pass that the staple busi- 
ness of earth’s majority is how, when, and where to eat, 
my ear was struck with “ ‘ In Troy there lies the scene,’ 
as the illustrious Will remarks.” 

Looking round, I perceived Mr. Peacock pointing his 
stick towa.'ls an open doorway next to the cook-shop, 
the hall beyond which was lighted with gas, while, painted 
in black letters on a pane of glass over the door, was the 
word “Billiards.” 

Suiting the action to the word, the speaker plunged at 
once into the aperture, and vanished. The boy-compa- 
nion was following more slowly, when his eye caught 
mine. A slight blush came over his dark cheek ; he 
stopped, and leaning against the door-jambs, gazed on 
me hard and long before he said — “Well met again, sir 1 
You find it hard to amuse yourself in this dull place ; the 
nights are long out of London.” 

“ Oh,” said I, ingenuously, “ everything here amuses 
me; the lights, the shops, the crowd; but, then, to me 
everything is new.” 

The youth came from his lounging-place and moved 
on, as if inviting me to walk ; while he answered, rather 
with bitter sullenness, than the melancholy his words 
expressed — 

“One thing, at least, cannot be new to you ; it is an 
old truth with us before we leave the nursery — ‘ Whatever 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 151 

is worth having must be bought; ergo^ he who cannot 
buy, has nothing worth having.’” 

“I don’t think,” said I, wisely, “that the things best 
worth having can be bought at all. You see that poor 
dropsical jeweller standing before his shop-door ; his shop 
is the finest in the street, — and I dare say he would be 
very glad to give it to you or me in return for our good 
healtt and strong legs. Oh no I I think with my father 
- — ‘All that are worth having are given to all — that is, 
nature arid labor.” 

“Your father says that; and you go by what your 
father says 1 Of course, all fathers have preached that, 
and many other good doctrines, since Adam preached to 
Cain ; but I don’t see that the fathers have found their 
sons very credulous listeners.” 

“ So much the worse for the sons,” said I, bluntly. 

“ Nature,” continued my new acquaintance, without 
attending to my ejaculation — “nature indeed does give 
us much, and nature also orders each of us how to use 
her gifts. If nature give you the propensity to drudge, 
you will drudge ; if she give me the ambition to rise, and 
the contempt for work, I may rise — but I certainly shall 
not work.” 

“ Oh,” said I, “you agree with Squills, I suppose, and 
fancy we are all guided by the bumps on our foreheads ? ” 
“And the blood in our veins, and our mother’s milk. 
We inherit other things besides gout and consumption. 
.So you always do as your father tells you I Good boy I ” 
I was piqued. Why we should be ashamed of being 
I. — 14 


158 


THE OAXTONS: 


taunted for goodness, I never could understand ; but cer* 
tainly I felt humbled. However, I answered sturdily — 

“ If you had as good a father as I have, you would not 
think it so very extraordinary to do as he tells you.” 

“Ah I so he is a very good father, is he I He must 
have a great trust in your sobriety and steadiness to let 
you wander about the world as he does.” 

“I am going to join him in London.” 

“ In London 1 Oh, does he live there ? ” 

“He is going to live there for some time.” 

“ Then, perhaps, we may meet. I, too, am going to 
town.” 

“ Oh, we shall be sure to meet there I ” said I, with 
frank gladness ; for my interest in the young man was 
not diminished by his conversation, however much I dis^ 
liked the sentiments it expressed. 

The lad laughed — and his laugh was peculiar: it was 
low, musical, but hollow and artificial. 

“ Sure to meet I London is a large place ; where shall 
you be found?” 

I gave him, without scruple, the address of the hotel 
at which I expected to find my father ; although his de- 
liberate inspection of my knapsack must already have 
apprised him of that address. He listened attentively, 
and repeated it twice over, as ^f to impress it on his 
memory ; and we both walked on in silence, till, turning 
up a small passage, we suddenly found ourselves in a 
large churchyard, — a flagged path stretched diagonally 
across it towards the market-place, on which it bordered 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


159 


In this churchyard, upon a grave-stone, sat a young 
Savoyard ; his hurdy-gurdy, or whatever else his instru- 
ment might be called, was on his lap ; and he was gnaw- 
ing his crust, and feeding some poor little white mice 
(standing on their hind-legs on the hurdy-gurdy) as mer- 
rily as if he had chosen the gayest resting-place in the 
world. 

We both stopped. The Savoyard, seeing us, put his 
arch head on one side, showed all his white teeth in that 
happy smile so peculiar to his race, and in which poverty 
seems to beg so blithely, and gave the handle of his in- 
strument a turn. 

“ Poor child I” said I. 

“Aha, you pity him I but why ? According to your 
rule, Mr. Caxton, he is not so much to be pitied; the 
dropsical jeweller would give him as much for his limbs 
and health as for ours I How is it — answer me, son of 
so wise a father — ^that no one pities the dropsical jeweller, 
and all pity the healthy Savoyard ? Is it, sir, because 
there is a stern truth which is stronger than all Spartan 
lessons — Poverty is the master-ill of the world. Look 
round. Does poverty leave its signs over the graves ? 
Look at that large tomb fenced round ; read that long 
inscription : — ‘Virtue ’ — ‘ best of husbands’ — ‘ affectionate 
father ’ — ‘ inconsolable grief’ — ‘ sleeps in the joyful hope,’ 
&c. &c. Do you suppose these stoneless mounds hide 
no dust of what were men just as good ? But no epi- 
taph tells their virtues, bespeaks their wives’ grief, or 
promises joyful hope to them 1 ” 


160 


THE CAXTONS : 


** Does it matter ? Does God care for the epitaph and 
tombstone ? ” 

^‘Batemi qualche coaaP^ said the Savoyard, in his 
touching patois, still smiling, and holding out his little 
hand ; therein I dropped a small coin. The boy evinced 
his gratitude by a new turn of the hurdy-gurdy. 

“ That is not labor,” said my companion ; “ and had you 
found him at work, you had given him nothing. I too 
have my instrument to play upon, and my mice to see 
after. Adieu I ” 

He waved his hand, and strode irreverently over the 
graves back in the direction we had come. 

I stood before the fine tomb with its fine epitaph : the 
Savoyard looked at me wistfully. 


CHAPTER VI. 

The Savoyard looked at me wistfully. I wished to 
enter into conversation with him. That was not easy. 
However, I began : — 

PisiSTRATUS. — “You must be often hungry enough, 
my poor boy. Do the mice feed you ?” 

Savoyard puts his head on one side, shakes it, and 
strokes his mice. 

PisisTRATus. — “ You are very fond of the mice ; they 
are your only friends, I fear.” 

Savoyard, evidently unaerstanding Pisistratus, rubs 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


161 


his face gently against the mice, then puts them softly 
down on a grave, and gives a turn to the hurdy-gurdy. 
The mice play unconcernedly over the grave. 

PisisTRATUS, pointing first to the beasts, then to the 
instrument. — “Which do you like best, the mice or the 
hurdy-gurdy ? ” 

Savoyard shows his teeth — considers — stretches him- 
self on the grass — plays with the mice — and answers 
volubly. 

PisiSTRATUS, by the help of Latin comprehending that 
the Savoyard says that the mice are alive, and the hurdy- 
gurdy is not — “Yes, a live friend is better than a dead 
one. Mortua est hurda-gurda I ” 

Savoyard shakes his head vehemently. — “No — no 1 
Eccellenza, non h morta I and strikes up a lively air on 
the slandered instrument. The Savoyard’s face brightens 
— he looks happy ; the mice run from the grave into his 
bosom. 

PISISTRATUS, affected, and putting the question in Latin 
^ “ Have you a father ? ” 

Savoyard, with his face overcast, — “No — Eccellenza !” 
then pausing a little, he says briskly, “ Si si ! ” and plays 
a solemn air on the hurdy-gurdy — stops — rests one hand 
on the instrument, and raises the other to heaven. 

PISISTRATUS understands : the father is like the hurdy- 
gurdy, at once dead and living. The mere form is a dead 
thing, but the music lives. Pisistratus drops anothei 
email piece of silver on the ground, and turns away. 

14 * L 


162 


THE CAXTONS. 


God help and God bless thee, Savoyard. Thou hast 
done Pisistratus all the good in the world. Thou hast 
corrected the hard wisdom of the young gentleman in the 
velveteen jacket; Pisistratus is a better lad for having 
stopped to listen to thee. 

I regained the entrance to the churchyard — I looked 
back : there sat the Savoyard, still amidst men’s graves, 
but under God’s sky. He was still looking at me wist- 
fully : and when he caught my eye, he pressed his hand 
to his heart, and smiled. God help and God bless thee, 
young Savoyard. 


✓ 


PART FIFTH. 


CHAPTERVIL 

In setting off the next morning, the Boots, whose heart 
I had won by an extra sixpence for calling me betimes, 
good-naturedly informed me that I might save a mile of 
the journey, and have a very pleasant walk into the bar- 
gain, if I took the footpath through a gentleman’s park, 
the lodge of which I should see about seven miles from 
the town. 

“And the grounds are showed too,” said the Boots, 
“ if so be you has a mind to stay and see ’em. But don’t 
you go to the gardener, he’ll want half a crown ; there’s 
an old ’oman at the lodge, who will show you all that’s 
worth seeing — the walks and the big cascade — for a 
tizzy. You may make use of my name,” he added 
proudly — “ Bob, boots at the Lion. She be a Aaunt o’ 
mine, and she minds them that come from me pertiklerly.” 

Not doubting that the purest philanthropy actuated 
these counsels, I thanked my shockheaded friend, and 
asked carelessly to whom the park belonged. 

( 163 ) 


164 


THE CAXTONS: 


“To Muster Trevanion, the great parliament man,’^ 
answered the Boots. “You has heard o’ him, I guess, 
sir ? ” 

I shook my head, surprised every hour more and more 
to find how very little there was in it. 

“ They takes in the Moderate Mards Journal at the 
Lamb ; and they say in the tap there that he’s one of the 
cleverest chaps in the House o’ Commons,” continued the 
Boots in a confidential whisper. “ But we takes in the 
Peopled Thunderbolt at the Lion, and we knows better 
this Muster Trevanion : he is but a trimmer — milk and 
water, — no /lorator, — not the right sort, — you under- 
stand ? ” 

Perfectly satisfied that I understood nothing about it, 
I smiled, and said, “ Oh yes and slipping on my knap- 
sack, commenced my adventures ; the Boots bawling 
after me, “ Mind, sir, you tells /launt I sent you I ” 

The town was only languidly putting forth symptoms 
of returning life as I strode through the streets ; a pale 
sickly unwholesome look on the face of the slothful 
Phoebus had succeeded the feverish hectic of the past 
night : the artisans whom I met glided by me haggard 
and dejected ; a few early shops were alone open ; one or 
two drunken men, emerging from the lanes, sallied home- 
ward with broken pipes in their mouth ; bills, with large 
capitals, calling attention to “ Best family teas at 4s. a 
pound;” “the arrival of Mr. Sloman’s caravan of wild 
beasts ; and Dr. Do’em’s “ Paracelsian Pills of Immor- 
tality,” stared out dull and uncheering from the walls of 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


165 


tciiaiitless dilapidated houses, in that chill sunrise which 
favors no illusion. I was glad when I had left the town 
behind me, and saw the reapers in the corn-fields, and 
heard the chirp of the birds. I arrived at the lodge of 
which the Boots had sy)oken : a pretty rustic building 
half-concealed by a belt of plantations, with two large 
iron gates for the owner’s friends, and a small turn-stile 
for the public, who, by some strange neglect on his part, 
or sad want of interest with the neighboring magistrates, 
had still preserved a right to cross the rich man’s domains, 
and look on his grandeur, limited to compliance with a 
reasonable request mildly stated on the notice-board, “to 
keep to the paths.” As it was not yet eight o’clock, I 
had plenty of time before me to see the grounds, and 
profiting by the economical hint of the Boots, I entered 
the lodge, and inquired for the old lady who was ^aunt 
to Mr. Bob. A young woman, who was busied in pre- 
paring breakfast, nodded with great civility to this re- 
quest, and, hastening to a bundle of clothes which I then 
perceived in the corner, she cried, “ Grandmother, here’s 
a gentleman to see the cascade.” 

The bundle of clothes then turned round, and exhibited 
a human countenance, which lighted up with great intel- 
ligence as the grand -daughter, turning to me, said with 
simplicity — “ She’s old, honest cretur, but she still likes 
to earn a sixpence, sir;” and taking a crutch-stalf in her 
hand while her grand-daughter put a neat bonnet on her 
head, this industrious gentlewoman sallied out at a pace 
which surprised me. 


1C6 


THE CAXTONS: 


1 attempted to enter into conversation with my gaide ; 
hut she did not seem much inclined to be sociable, and 
the beauty of the shades and groves which now spread 
before my eyes reconciled me to silence. 

I have seen many fine places since then, but I do not 
remember to have seen a landscape more beautiful in its 
peculiar English character than that which I now gazed 
on. It had none of the feudal characteristics of ancient 
parks, with giant oaks, fantastic pollards, glens covered 
with fern, and deer grouped upon the slopes ; on the con- 
trary, in spite of some fine trees, chiefly beech, the im- 
pression conveyed was, that it was a new place — a made 
place. Y ou might see ridges on the lawns which showed 
iv^here hedges had been removed ; the pastures were par- 
celled out in divisions by new wire-fences ; young plan- 
tations, planned with exquisite taste, but without the 
venerable formality of avenues and quincunxes, by which 
/ou knew the parks that date from Elizabeth and James, 
.liversified the rich extent of verdure ; instead of deer, 
/vere short-horned cattle of the finest breed — sheep that 
Fould have won the prize at an agricultural show. 
Everywhere there was the evidence of improvement — 
energy — capital ; but capital clearly not employed for the 
mere purpose of return. The ornamental was too con- 
spicuously predominant amidst the lucrative, not to say 
eloquently — “ The owner is willing to make the most of 
his land, but not the most of his money.” 

But the old woman’s eagerness to earn sixpence had 
impressed me unfavorably as to the character nf the 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


167 


master “ Here,” thought I, “ are all the signs of riches ; 
and yet this poor old woman, living on the very threshold 
of opulence, is in want of a sixpence.” 

These surmises, in the indulgence of which I piqued 
myself on my penetration, were strengthened into convic* 
tions by the few sentences which I succeeded at last ia 
eliciting from the old woman. 

“ Mr. Trevanion must be a rich man ? ” said I. 

0 ay, rich eno’ I ” grumbled my guide. 

“And,” said I, surveying the extent of shrubbery or 
dressed ground through which our way wound, now 
emerging into lawns and glades, now belted by rare garden 
trees, now (as every inequality of the ground was turned 
to advantage in the landscape) sinking into the dell, now 
climbing up the slopes, and now confining the view to 
some object of graceful art or enchanting nature — “And,” 
said I, “ he must employ many hands here — plenty of 
work, eh ? ” 

“Ay, ay — I don’t say that he don’t find work for those 
who want it. But it ain’t the same place it wor in my 
day.” 

“ You remember it in other hands, then ? ” 

“ Ay, ay I When the Hogtons had it, honest folk I 
My good man was the gardener — none of those set-up 
fine gentlemen who can’t put hand to a spade.” 

Poor faithful old woman I 

I began to hate the unknown proprietor. Here clearly 
was some mushroom usurper who had bought out the old 
simple- hospitable family, neglected its ancient servants. 


168 


THE CAXTONS: 


left them to earn tizzies by showing waterfalls, and insulted 
their eyes by his selfish wealth. 

“ There’s the water all spilt — it warn’t so in my day,” 
said the guide. 

A rivulet, whose murmur I had long heard, now stole 
suddenly into view, and gave to the scene the crowning 
charm. As, relapsing into silence, we tracked its sylvan 
course, under dipping chestnuts and shady limes, the house 
itself emerged on the opposite side — ^ a modern building 
of white stone, with the noblest Corinthian portico I ever 
saw in this country. 

“ A fine house, indeed,” said I. “ Is Mr. Trevanioa 
here much?” 

“ Ay, ay — I don’t mean to say that he goes away alto- 
gether, but it ain’t as it wor in my day, when the Hogtons 
lived here all the year round in their warm house, — not 
that one.” 

Good old woman, and these poor banished Hogtons I 
thought I : hateful parvenu ! I was pleased when a curve 
in the shrubberies shut out the house from view, though 
in reality bringing us nearer to it. And the boasted cas- 
cade, whose roar I had heard for some moments, came in 
sight. 

Amidst the Alps, such a waterfall would have been in- 
significant ; but contrasting ground highly dressed, with 
no other bold features, its effect was striking, and even 
grand. The banks were here narrowed and compressed ; 
rocks, partly natural, partly no doubt artificial, gave a 
rough aspect to the margin ; and the cascade fell from a 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


IG^ 

considerable height into rapid waters, which my guide 
mumbled out were “mortal deep.’’ 

“ There wor a madman leapt over where you be stand- 
ing,” said the old woman, “ two years ago last June.” 

“A madman! why,” said I, observing, with an eye 
practised in the gymnasium of the Hellenic Institute, the 
narrow space of the banks over the gulf — “ why, my good 
lady, it need not be a madman to perform that leap.” 

And so saying, with ane of those sudden impulses 
which it would be wrong to ascribe to the noble quality 
of courage, I drew back a few steps, and cleared the 
abyss. But when from the other side I looked back at 
what I had done, and saw that failure had been death, a 
sickness came over me, and I felt as if I would not have 
releapt the gulf to become lord of the domain. 

“ And how am I to get back ? ” said I in a forlorn 
voice to the old woman, who stood staring at me on the 
other side — “ Ah ! I see there is a bridge below.” 

“ But you can’t go over the bridge ; there’s a gate on 
it ; master keeps the key himself. You are in the private 
grounds now. Dear — dear I the squire would be so angry 
if he knew. You must go back ; and they’ll see you from 
the house I Dear me I dear — dear 1 What shall 1 do ^ 
Can’t you leap back again ? ” 

Moved by these piteous exclamations, and not wishing 
to subject the poor old lady to the wrath of a master 
evidently an unfeeling tyrant, I resolved to pluck up 
courage and releap the dangerous abyss. 

“Oh yes — never fear,’ said I, therefore. “Whal’s 
I 15 


170 


THE CAXTONS: 


been done once ought to be done twice, if needful. Just 
get out of my way, will you ? ” 

And I receded several paces over a ground much too 
rough to favor my run for a spring. But my heart knocked 
against my ribs. I felt that impulse can do wordera 
where preparation fails. 

“You had best be quick, then,” said the old woman. 

Horrid old woman 1 I began to esteem her less I 
set my teeth, and was about to rush on, when a voice close 
beside me said — 

“ Stay, young man ; I will let you through the gate.” 

I turned round sharply, and saw close by my side, in 
great wonder that I had not seen him before, a man, 
whose homely (but not working) dress seemed to intimate 
his station as that of the head gardener, of whom my 
guide had spoken. He was seated on a stone under a 
chestnut-tree, with an ugly cur at his feet, who snarled at 
me as I turned. 

“Thank you, my man,” said I joyfully. “I confess 
frankly that I was very much afraid of that leap.” 

“Ho ! Yet you said, what can be done once can be 
done twice.” 

“ I did not say it could be done, but ought to be done.” 

“ Humph 1 That’s better put.” 

Here the man rose ; the dog came and smelt my legS; 
and then, as if satisfied with my respectability, waggec 
the stump of his tail. 

I looked across the waterfall for the old woman, and tfl 
my surprise, saw her hobbling back as fast as she could 


A FAMILY PICTURE. .171 

“Ah I ’’ said I, laughing, “the poor old thing is afraid 
you’ll tell her master — for you’re the head gardener, I 
suppose ? But I am the only person to blame. Pray 
say that, if you mention the circumstance at all I ” and I 
drew out half a crown, which I proffered to my new 
conductor. 

lie put back the money with a low “ Humph — not 
amiss.” Then, in a louder voice, “No occasion to bribe 
me, young man, ; I saw it all.” 

“ I fear your master is rather hard to the poor Hog- 
tons’ old servants.” 

“Is he? Oh I humph I my master. Mr. Trevanion 
you mean ? ” 

‘ Yes.” 

“Well, I dare say people say so. This is the way.” 
And he led me down a little glen away from the fall. 

Everybody must have observed that after he has in- 
curred or escaped a great danger his spirits rise wonder- 
fully — he is in a state of pleasing excitement. So it was 
with me. I talked to the gardener d coeur ouvert, as the 
Erench say ; and I did not observe that his short mono- 
syllables in rejoinder all served to draw out my little his- 
tory — my journey, its destination; my schooling under 
Dr. Herman, and my father’s Great Book. I was only 
male somewhat suddenly aware of the familiarity that 
had sprung up beiween us, when, just as, having per- 
formed a circuitous meander, we regained the stream and 
stood before an iron gate, set in an arch of rock-work, 
my companion said simply — “And your name, young geiH 
tleman ? What’s your name?” 


x72 


THE CAXTONS: 


I hesitated a moment; but having lieard that such 
communications were usually made the visitors of show- 
places, I answered — “ Oh 1 a very venerable one, if your 
master is what they call a bibliomaniac — Caxton.” 

“Caxton!” cried the gardener, with some vivacity; 

* there is a Cumberland family of that name ” 

That’s mine ; and my Uncle Roland is the head of 
that family.” 

^‘And you are the son of Augustine Caxton ? ” 

“ I am. You have heard of my dear father, then ? ” 

“We will not pass by the gate now. Follow me — • 
this way and my guide, turning abruptly round, strode 
up a narrow path, and the house stood a hundred yards 
before me ere I recovered my surprise. 

“Pardon me,” said I, “but where are we going, my 
good friend ? ” 

“ Good friend — good friend ! Well said, sir. You are 
going amongst good friends. I was at college with your 
father. I loved him well. I knew a little of your uncle, 
too. My name is Trcvanion.” 

Blind young fool that I was I The moment my guide 
told his name, I was struck with amazement at my unac- 
countable mistake. The small, insignificant figure took 
instant dignity ; the homely dress, of rough, dark broad- 
cloth was the natural and becoming dishabille of a coun- 
try gentleman in his own demesnes. Even the ugly cur 
became a Scotch terrier of the rarest breed. 

My guide smiled good-naturedly at my stupor; and 
patting me on the shoulder, said — 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 173 

“ It is the gardener you must apologise to, not me. Be 
is a very handsome fellow, six feet high.” 

I had not found my tongue before we had ascended a 
broad flight of stairs under the portico ; passed a spa- 
cious hall, adorned with statues and fragrant with large 
orange-trees ; and, entering a small room, hung with pic- 
tures, in which were arranged all the appliances for break- 
fast, my companion said to a lady, who rose from behind 
the tea-urn, “ My dear Ellinor, I introduce to you the son 
of our old friend, Augustine Caxton. Make him stay 
with us as long as he can. Young gentleman, in Lady 
Ellinor Trevanion think that you see one whom you 
ought to know well — family friendships should descend.” 

My host said these last words in an imposing tone, and 
then pounced on a letter-bag on the table, drew forth an 
immense heap of letters and newspapers, threw himself 
into an arm-chair, and seemed perfectly forgetful of my 
existence. 

The lady stood a moment in mute surprise, and I saw 
that she changed color from pale to red, and red to pale, 
before she came forward with the enchanting grace of un- 
affected kindness, took me by the hand, drew me to a 
seat next to her own, and asked so cordially after my 
father, my uncle, my whole family, that in five minutes I 
felt myself at home. Lady Ellinor listened with a smile 
(though with moistened eyes, which she wiped every now 
and then) to my artless details. At length she said — 

“ Have you never heard your father speak of me — I 
mean of us — of the Trevanions ? ” 

15 * 


174 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ Never,” said I bluntly : and that would puzzle me^ 
only ray dear father, you know, is not a great talker.” 

“ Indeed I he was very animated when I knew him,” 
said Lady Ellinor ; and she turned her head and sighed. 

At this moment there entered a young lady, so fresh, 
so blooming, so lovely, that every other thought vanished 
out of my head at once. She came in singing, as gay as 
a bird, and seeming to my adoring sight quite as native 
to the skies. 

“Fanny,” said Lady Ellinor, “shake hands with Mr. 
Caxton, the son of one whom I have not seen since I war 
little older than you, but whom I remember as if it were 
but yesterday.” 

Miss Fanny blushed and smiled, and held out her hand 
with an easy frankness which I in vain endeavored to imi- 
tate. During breakfast, Mr. Trevanion continued to read 
his letters and glance over the papers, with an occasional 
ejaculation of “ Pish I ” — “ Stuff I ” — between the interval 
in which he mechanically swallowed his tea, or some small 
morsels of dry toast. Then rising with a suddenness 
which characterised his movements, he stood on his hearth 
for a few moments buried in thought ; and now that a 
large-brimmed hat was removed from his brow, and the 
abruptness of his first movement, with the sedateness of 
his after pause, arrested my curious attention, I was more 
than ever ashamed of my mistake. It was a careworn, 
eager, and yet musing countenance, hollow-eyed, and with 
decj) lines ; but it was one of those faces which take dig- 
nity and refinement from the mental cultivation which 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


175 


distinguishes the true aristocrat, viz., the highly educated, 
acutely intelligent man. Very handsome might that face 
have been in youth, for the features, though small, were 
exquisitely defined ; the brow, partially bald, was noble 
and massive, and there was almost feminine delicacy in 
the curve of the lip. The whole expression of the face 
was commanding, but sad. Often, as my experience of 
life increased, have I thought to trace upon that expressive 
visage the history of energetic ambition curbed by a fas- 
tidious philosophy and a scrupulous conscience ; but then 
all that I could see was a vague, dissatisfied melancholy, 
which dejected me I knew not why. 

Presently Trevanion returned to the table, collected 
his letters, moved slowly towards the door, and vanished. 

His wife’s eyes followed him tenderly. Those eyes 
reminded me of my mother’s, as, I verily believe, did all 
eyes that expressed affection. I crept nearer to her, and 
longed to press the white hand that lay so listless before 
me. 

“ Will you walk out with us ? ” said Miss Trevanion, 
turning to me. I bowed, and in a few minutes I found 
myself alone. While the ladies left me, for their shawls 
and bonnets, I took up the newspapers which Mr. Tre- 
vanion had thrown on the table, by way of something to 
do. My eye was caught by his own name ; it occurred 
often, and in all the papers. There was contemptuous 
aoiise in one, high eulogy in another ; but one passage, 
in ajournal that seemed to aim at impartiality, struck 
me so much as k) remain in my memory ; and I am sure 


176 


THE CAXTONS: 


f-ljat I can still quote the sense, though not the exact 
words. The paragraph ran somewhat thus : — 

“ In the present state of parties, our contemporaries 
have, not unnaturally, devoted much space to the claims 
or demerits of Mr. Trevanion. It is a name that stands 
unquestionably high in the House of Commons ; but, as 
juiqiiestionably, it commands little sympathy in the coun- 
try. Mr. Trevanion is essentially and emphatically a 
member of parliament. He is a close and ready debater ; 
he is an admirable chairman in committees. Though 
never in office, his long experience of public life, his gra- 
tuitous attention to public business, have ranked him 
high among those practical politicians from whom min- 
isters are selected. A man of spotless character and ex- 
cellent intentions, no doubt, he must be considered ; and 
in him any cabinet would gain an honest and a useful 
member. There ends all we can say in his praise. As 
a speaker, he wants the fire and enthusiasm which engage 
the popular sympathies. He has the ear of the House, 
not the heart of the country. An oracle on subjects of 
mere business, in the great questions of policy he is com- 
paratively a failure. He never embraces any party 
heartily ; he never espouses any question as if wholly in 
earnest. The moderation on which he is said to pique 
himself, often exhibits itself in fastidious crotchets, and 
an attempt at philosophical originality of candor, which 
has long obtained him, with his enemies, the re,putation 
of a trimmer. Such a man circumstances may throw into 
temporary power ; but can he command lasting influence ? 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


177 


N o : let Mr. Trevanion remain in what nature and posi* 
tion assign as his proper post — that of an upright, indc* 
pendent, able member of parliament; conciliating sen- 
sible men on both sides, when party runs into extremes. 
He is undone as a cabinet minister. His scruples would 
break up any government ; and his want of decision — 
when, as in all human affairs, some errors must be con- 
ceded to obtain a great good — would shipwreck his own 
fame.” 

I had just got to the end of this paragraph, when the 
ladies returned. 

My hostess observed the newspaper in my hand, and 
said, with a constrained smile, “ Some attack on Mr 
Trevanion, I suppose ? ” 

“ No,” said I, awkwardly ; for, perhaps, the paragraph 
that appeared to me so impartial, was the most galling 
attack of all — “No, not exactly.” 

“ T never read the papers now — at least what are called 
the leading articles — it is too painful : and once they 
gave me so much pleasure — that was when the career 
began, and before the fame was made.” 

Here Lady Ellinor opened the window which admitted 
on the lawn, and in a few moments we were in that part 
of the pleasure-grounds which the family reserved from 
the public curiosity. We passed by rare shrubs and 
strange flowers, long ranges of conservatories, in which 
bloomed and lived all the marvellous vegetation of Africa 
and the Indies. 

“ Mr. Trevanion is fond of flowers ?” said I 
M 


178 


THE C AXTONS : 


The fair Fauny laughed. “ T don’t think he knowi 
one from another.” 

“Nor I either,” said I: “that is, when I fairly lose 
sight of a rose or a hollyhock.” 

“ The farm will interest you more,” said Lady Ellinor. 
We came to farm buildings recently erected, and no 
doubt on the most improved principle. Lady Ellinor 
pointed out to me machines and contrivances of the new- 
est fashion, for abridging labor, and perfecting the me- 
chanical operations of agriculture. 

“ Ah, then, Mr. Trevanion is fond of farming ? ” 

The pretty Fanny laughed again^ 

“ My father is one of the great oracles in agriculture, 
one of the great patrons of all its improvements ; but, as 
for being fond of farming, I doubt if he knows his own 
fields when he rides through them.” 

We returned to the house ; and Miss Trevanion, whose 
frank kindness had already made too deep an impression 
upon the youthful heart of Pisistratus the Second, offered 
to show me the picture-gallery. The collection was con- 
fined to the work of English artists ; and Miss Treva- 
nion pointed out to me the main attractions of the gallery 
“ Well, at least Mr. Trevanion is fond of pictures ?” 
“Wrong again,” said Fanny, shaking her arch head. 
“ My father is said to be an admirable judge ; but he only 
buys pictures from a sense of duty — to encourage our 
own painters. A picture once bought, I am not sure 
that he ever looks at it again.” 

“ What does he then ” I stopped short, for I fell 

my meditated question was ill-bred. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


179 


“ What does he like then ? you were about to say. 
Why, I have known him, of course, since I could know 
anything ; but I have never yet discovered what my father 
does like. No — not even politics, though he lives for 
politics alone. You look puzzled ; you will know him 
better some day, I hope ; but you will never solve the 
mystery — what Mr. Trevanion likes.” 

“ You are wrong,” said Lady Elliuor, who had followed 
us into the room, unheard by us. “ I can tell you what 
your father does more than like — what he loves and serves 
every hour of his noble life — justice, beneficence, honor, 
and his country. A man who loves these may be excused 
for indifference to the last geranium, or the newest plough, 
or even (though that offends you more, Fanny) the freshest 
master-piece by Landseer, or the latest fashion honored 
by Miss Trevanion.” 

“ Mamma I ” said Fanny, and the tears sprang to her 
eyes. 

But Lady Ellinor looked to me sublime as she spoke, 
her eyes kindled, her breast heaved. The wife taking the 
husband’s part against the child, and comprehending so 
well what the child felt not, despite its experience of every 
day, and what the world would never know, despite all 
the vigilance of its praise and its blame, was a picture, to 
my taste, finer than any in the collection. 

Her face softened as she saw the tears in Fanny’s bright 
hazel eyes ; she held out her hand, which her child kissed 
tenderly : and whispering, “ ’Tis not the giddy word you 
must go by, mamma, or there will be something to forgive 
every minute,” Miss Trevanion glided from the room. 


THE CAXTONS: 


ISO 

“ Have you a sister ? ” asked Lady Elliuor. 

“ No.’’ 

“And Trevanion has no son,” she said mournfully. 
The blood rushed to my cheeks. Oh, young fool, again ! 
We were both silent, when the door was opened, and Mr. 
Trevanion entered. 

“ Humph I ” said he, smiling as he saw me — and his 
smile was charming, though rare. “ Humph, young sir, 
I came to seek for you, — I have been rude, I fear ; par- 
don it — that thought has only just occurred to me, so 1 
left my Blue Books, and my amanuensis hard at work on 
them, to ask you to come out for half an hour, — just half 
an hour, it is all I can give you — a deputation at One I 
Y ou dine and sleep here, of course ? ” 

“ Ah, sir I my mother will be so uneasy if I am not in 
town to-night.” 

“ Pooh ! ” said the member, “ I’ll send an express.” 

“ Oh, no indeed ; thank you.” 

“ Why not ? ” 

I hesitated. “You see, sir, that my father and mother 
are both new to London : and though I am new too, yet 
they may want me — I may be of use.” Lady Ellinor 
put her hand on my head, and sleeked down my hair as 
1 spoke. 

“ Bight, young man, right ; you will do in the world, 
wrong as that is. I don’t mean that you’ll succeed as 
the rogues' say — that’s another question; but, if you 
don’t rise, you’ll not fall. Now, put on your hat and 
come with me ; we’ll walk to the lodge — you will be in 
time for a coach.” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


18 i 


I took my leave of Lady Ellinor, and longed to say 
something about ‘‘compliments to Miss Fanny but the 
words stuck in my throat, and my host seemed impatient. 

“We must see you soon again I’’ said Lady Ellinoi 
kindly, as she followed us to the door. 

Mr. Trevanion walked on briskly and in silence — one 
hand in his bosom, the other swinging carelessly a thick 
walking-stick. 

“But I must go round by the bridge,” said I, “for I 
forgot my knapsack. I threw it off when I made my 
leap, and the old lady certainly never took charge of it ” 

“Come, then, this way. How bid are you?” 

“Seventeen and* a half.” 

“You know Latin and Greek as they know them at 
schools, I suppose ? ” 

“I think I know them pretty well, sir.” 

“Does your father say so?” 

“ Why, my father is fastidious ; however, he owns that 
he is satisfied on the whole.” 

“So am I, then. Mathematics ? ” 

“A little.” 

“ Good.” 

Here the conversation dropped for some time. I had 
found and re-strapped the knapsack, and we were near the 
lodge, when Mr. Trevanion said, abruptly, “ Talk, my 
young friend, talk : I like to hear )'ou talk — it refreshes 
me. Nobody has talked naturally to me these last ten 
years.” 

The request v»-as a complete damper to my ingenuous 
L — lb 


THE CAXTONS: 


ISJi 

eloquence : I c jiild not have talked naturally now for the 
life of me. 

“ I made a mistake, I see,” said my companion, good- 
humoredly, noticing my embarrassment. “ Here we are 
at the lodge. The coach will be by in five minutes : you 
can spend that time in hearing the old woman praise the 
Hogtons and abuse me. And hark you, sir, never ^are 
three straws for praise or blame — leather and prunella I 
praise and blame are here ! ” and he struck his hand upon 
his breast, with almost passionate emphasis. “ Take a 
specimen. These Hogtons were the bane of the place ; 
uneducated and miserly ; their land a wilderness, their 
village a pig-sty. I come, with capital and intelligence ; 
I redeem the soil, I banish pauperism, I civilize all around 
me ; no merit in me — I am but a type of capital guided 
by education — a machine. And yet the old woman is not 
the only one who will hint to you that the Hogtons were 
angels, and myself the usual antithesis to angels. And, 
what is more, sir, because that old woman, who has ten 
shillings a week from me, sets her heart upon earning her 
sixpences — and I give her that privileged luxury — every 
visitor she talks to goes away with the idea that I, the 
••ICO Mr. Trevanion, let her starve on what she can pick 
up from the sight-seers. Now, does that signify a jot ? 
Good-bye. Tell your father his old friend must see him ; 
profit by his calm wisdom ; his old friend is a fool some- 
times, and sad at heart. When you are settled, send me 
a line to St. James’s Square, to say where you 
Humph I that’s enough.” 


are 


A FAMILY PIC PURE. 183 

Mr. Trevaniori wrung my hand, and strodu off. 

I did not wait for the coach, but proceeded towards the 
turn-stile, where the old woman (who had either seen, oi 
scented from a distance, that tizzy of which I was the 
impersonation) — 

“Hushed in grim repose, did wait her morning prey.” 

My opinions as to her sufferings, and the virtues of the 
departed Hogtons, somewhat modified, I contented my- 
self with dropping into her open palm the exact sum vir- 
tually agreed on. But that palm still remained open, and 
the fingers of the other clawed hold of me as I stood, 
impounded in the curve of the turnstile, like a cork in a 
patent cork-screw. 

“And threepence for Nephy Bob,” said the old lady. 

“ Threepence for nephew Bob, and why ? ” 

“ ’Tis his perquisites when he recommends a gentle- 
man. You would not have me pay out of my own earn- 
ings : for he will have it, or he’ll ruin my bizziness. Poor 
folk must be paid for their trouble.” 

Obdurate to this appeal, and mentally consigning Bob 
to a master whose feet would be all the handsomer for 
boots, I threaded the stile and escaped. 

Towards evening I reached London. Who ever saw 
London for the first time and was not disappointed? 
Those long suburbs melting indefinably away into the 
capital, forbid all surprise. The gradual is a great dis- 
enchanter. I thought it prudent to take a hackney-coach, 
and so jolted my way to the Hotel, the door of 


rilE OAXTONS: 


IS4 

which was in a small street out of the Strand, though the 
greater part of the building faced that noisy thorough- 
fare. I found my father in a state of great discomfort in 
a little room, which he paced up and down like a lion 
new caught in his cage. My poor mother was full of 
complaints — for the first time in her life, I found her in 
disputably crossish. It was an ill time to relate my ad- 
ventures. I had enough to do to listen. They had all 
day been hunting for lodgings in vain. My father’s 
pocket had been picked of a new India handkerchief. 
Primmins, who ought to know I<ondon so well, knew no- 
thing about it, and declared it was turned topsy-turvy, 
and all the streets had changed names. The new silk 
umbrella, left for five minutes unguarded in the hall, had 
been exchanged for an old gingham with three holes in it. 

It was not till my mother remembered that if she did 
not see herself that my bed was well aired I should cer- 
tainly lose the use of my limbs, and therefore disappeared 
with Primmins and a pert chambermaid, w'ho seemed to 
think we gave more trouble than we were worth, that I 
told my father of my new acquaintance with Mr. Tre- 
vanion. 

He did not seem to listen to me till I got to the name 
Trevanion. He then became very pale, and sat down 
quietly. “ Go on,” said he, observing I stopped to look 
at him. 

When I had told all, and given him the kind messages 
with which I had been charged by husband and wife, he 
smiled faintly : and then, shading his face with his hand, 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


he seemed to muse, not cheerfully, perhaps, for 1 heard 
him sigh once or twice. 

“And Ellinor,’’ said he at last, without looking up — 
“ Iiady Ellinor, I mean; she is very — very 

“Very what, sir?” 

“Very handsome still?” 

“ Handsome I Yes, handsome, certainly ; but I thought 
more of her manner than her face. And then Fanny, 
Miss Fanny, is so young I ” 

“Ah 1 ” said my father, murmuring in Greek the cele- 
brated lines of which Pope’s translation is familiar to all : 

“‘Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, 

Now green in youth, now withering on the ground.’ 

“Well, SO they wish to see me. Did Ellin or. Lady Elli- 
nor, say that, or her — her husband?” 

“ Her husband, certainly — Lady Ellinor rather implied 
than said it.” 

“ We shall see,” said my father. “ Open the window, 
this room is stifling.” 

I opened the window, which looked on the Strand. 
The noise, the voices, the trampling feet, the rolling 
wheels, became loudly audible. My father leant out for 
some moments, and I stood by his side. He turned to 
me with a serene face. “Every ant on the hill,” said he, 
“ carries its load, and its home is but made by the burden 
that it bears. How happy am 1 1 — how I should bless 
God I How light my burden I how secure my home I ” 

My mother came in as he ceased. He went up to her 
16 =^ 


186 


THE CAXTONS: 


put liis arm round her waist, and kissed her. Such ca- 
resses with him had not lost thek tender charm by custom : 
my mother’s brow, before somewhat ruffled, grew smooth 
on the instant. Yet she lifted her eyes to his soft sur- 
prise. “I was but thinking,” said my father apologeti- 
cally, “how much I owed you, and how much I love 
you I ” 


CHAPTER II. 

And now behold us, three days after my arrival, settled 
in all the state and grandeur of our own house in Russell- 
street, Bloomsbury : the library of the Museum close at 
hand. My father spends his mornings in those lata si~ 
lentia, as Yirgil calls the world beyond the grave. And 
a world beyond the grave we may well call that land of 
the ghosts, a book collection. 

“ Pisistratus,” said my father, one evening, as he ar- 
ranged his notes before him, and rubbed his spectacles. 
“ Pisistratus, a great library is an awful place I There 
are interred all the remains of men since the Flood.” 

“ It is a burial-place ! ” quoth my Uncle Roland, who 
had that day found us out. 

“It is an Heracleal” said my father. 

“ Please, not such hard words,” said the Captain, shak- 
ing his head. 

“ Herac’ea was the city of necromancers, in which they 
raised th3 dead. Ho I want to speak to Cicero? J 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


187 


invoke him. Do 1 want to chat in the Athenian market- 
place, and hear news two thousand years old ? — 1 write 
down ray charm on a slip of paper, and a grave magician 
calls me up Aristophanes. And we owe all this to our 

ancest ” 

“ Brother ! ” 

“Ancestors, who wrote books — thank you.’’ 

Here Roland offered his snuff-box to my father, who, 
abhorring snuff, benignly imbibed a pinch, and sneezed 
five times in consequence : an excuse for Uncle Roland 
to say, which he did five times, with great unction, “ God 
bless you, brother Austin I ” 

As soon as my father had recovered himself, he pro- 
ceeded, with tears in his eyes, but calm as before the in- 
terruption — for he was of the philosophy of the Stoics : — 
“ But it is not that which is awful. It is the presuming 
to vie with these ‘spirits elect:’ to say to them, ‘Make 
way — I to'o claim place with the chosen. I too would 
confer with the living, centuries after the death that con- 
sumes my dust. I too ’ — Ah, Pisistratus ! I wish Uncle 
Jack had been at Jericho before he had brought me up 
to London, and placed me in the midst of those rulers 
of the world 1 ” 

I was busy, while my father spoke, in making some 
pendent shelves for these “spirits elect:” for my mother, 
always provident where my father’s comforts were con- 
cerned, had foreseen the necessity of some such accom- 
modation in a hired lodging-house, and had not only care- 
fully brought up to town my little box of tools, but gone 


.88 


THE OAXTONS: 


out herself that morning to buy the raw materials. 
Checking the plane in its progress over the smooth deal, 
“ My dear father,” said I, “ if at the Philhellenic Insti- 
tute I had looked with as much awe as you do on the big 
fellows that had gone before me, I should have stayed, to 
all eternity, the lag of the Infant Division.” 

“ Pisistratus, you are as great an agitator as your 
namesake,” cried my father, smiling. “And so, a fig for 
the big fellows I ” 

And now my mother entered in her pretty evening cap, 
all smiles and good humor, having just arranged a room 
for Uncle Roland, concluded advantageous negotiations 
with the laundress, held high council with Mrs. Primmins 
on the best mode of defeating the extortions of London 
tradesmen ; and, pleased with herself and all the world, 
she kissed my father’s forehead as it bent over his notes, 
and came to the tea-table, which only waited its presiding 
deity. My Uncle Roland, with his usual gallantry, 
started up, kettle in hand (our own urn — for we had one 
— not being yet unpacked), and having performed with 
soldier-like method the chivalrous office thus volunteered, 
he joined me at my employment, and said — 

“ There is a better steel for the hands of a well-born 
lad than a carpenter’s plane.” 

“Ahal uncle — that depends ” 

“ Depends ! — what on ? ” 

“ On the use one makes of it. Peter the Great wag 
better employed in making ships than Charles XU in 
cutting throats ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


189 


“Poor Charles XII. 1 ” said my uncle, sighing patheti- 
cally — ‘‘a very brave fellow I ” 

“ Pity he did not like the ladies a little better I ” 

“No man is perfect 1’’ said my uncle sententiouslf. 
“ But, seriously, you are now the male hope of the family 
— you are now — ” My uncle stopped, and his face dark- 
ened. I saw he thought of his son — that mysterious son ! 
And, looking at him tenderly, I observed that his deep 
lines had grown deeper, his iron-grey hair more grey. 
There was the trace of recent suffering on his face ; and 
though he had not spoken to us a word of the business 
on which he had left us, it required no penetration to per- 
ceive that it had come to no successful issue. 

My uncle resumed — “Time out of mind, every gene- 
ration of our house has given one soldier to his country. 
I look round now : only one branch is budding yet ou 
the old tree ; and ” 

“Ah! uncle. But what would they say? Do you 
think that I should not like to be a soldier ? Don’t 
tempt me I ” 

My uncle had recourse to his snuff-box : and at that 
moment — unfortunately, perhaps, for the laurels that 
might otherwise have wreathed the brows of Pisistratus 
of England, — private conversation was stopped by the 
sudden and noisy entrance of Uncle Jack. No appa- 
rition could have been more unexpected. 

“ Here I am, my'dear friends. How d’ye do — how are 
you all ? Captain de Caxton, yours heartily. Yes, I 
am released, thank heaven I I have given up the drudgery 


190 


THE CAXTONS; 


of that pitiful provincial paper. I was not made for it 
An ocean in a tea-cup I I was indeed I Little, sordid, 
narrow interests — and I, wliose heart embraces all hu- 
manity. You might as well turn a circle into an isolated 
triangle.’^ 

“ Isosceles I ” said my father, sighing as he pushed 
aside his notes, and very slowly becoming aware of the 
eloquence that destroyed all chance of further progress 
that night in the Great Book. “ Isosceles triangle. Jack 
Tibbets — not isolated. ” 

“Isosceles or isolated, it is all one,” said Uncle Jack, 
as he rapidly performed three evolutions, by no means 
consistent with his favorite theory of “ the greatest hap- 
piness of the greatest number:” — first, he emptied into 
the cup which he took from my mother’s hand half the 
thrifty contents of a London cream-jug ; secondly, he re- 
duced the circle of a mufiin, by an abstraction of three 
triangles, to as nearly an isosceles as possible ; and 
thirdly, striding towards the fire, lighted in consideration 
of Captain de Caxton, and hooking his coat-tails under 
his arms, while he sipped his tea, he permitted another 
circle peculiar to humanity wholly to eclipse the luminary 
it approached. 

“ Isolated or isosceles, it is all the same thing. Man 
is made for his fellow-creatures. I had long been dis- 
gusted with the interference of those selfish Squirearchs. 
Your departure decided me. I have concluded negotia- 
tions with a London firm of spirit and capital, and ex- 
tended views of philanthropy. On .Saturday last I re- 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


191 


tired from the service of the oligarchy, I am now in my 
true capacity of protector of the million. My prospectus 
is printed — here it is in my pocket. — Another cup of tea, 
sister ; a little more cream, .and another muffin. Shall I 
ring ? ” Having disembarrassed himself of his cup and 
saucer. Uncle Jack then drew forth from his pocket a 
damp sheet of printed paper. In large capitals stood 
out “ The Anti-Monopoly Gazette, or Popular Cham- 
pion.’’ He waved it triumphantly before my father’s eyes. 

“ Pisistratus,” said my father, “look here. This is 
the way your Uncle Jack now prints his pats of butter : 
a cap of liberty growing out of an open book I Good, 
Jackl Goodl good I” 

“ It is Jacobinical I ” exclaimed the Captain. 

“ Very likely,” said my father; “but knowledge and 
freedom are the best devices in the world to print upon 
pats of butter intended for the market.” 

“ Pats of butter I I don’t understand,” said Uncle Jack. 

“ The less you understand, the better will the butter 
sell, Jack,” said my father, settling back to his notes. 


CHAPTER III. 

Uncle Jack had made up his mind to lodge with us, 
and my mother found some difficulty in inducing him to 
comprehend that there was no bed to spare. 

“ That’s unlucky,” said he. “ I had no sooner arrived 


192 


THE CAXTONS: 


in town than I was pestered with invitations ; but I re- 
fused them all, and kept myself for you.” 

“ So kind in you I so like you 1 ” said my mother ; “ but 
you see ” 

“Well, then, I must be off and find a room. Don’t 
fret ; you know I can breakfast and dine with you all the 
same ; that is, when my other friends will let me. I shall 
be dreadfully persecuted.” So saying, Uncle Jack re- 
pocketed his prospectus, and wished us good-night. 

The clock had struck eleven ; my mother had retired ; 
when my father looked up from his books, and returned 
his spectacles to their case. I had finished my work, and 
was seated over the fire, thinking now of Fanny Tre- 
vanion’s hazel eyes — now, with a heart that beat as high 
at the thought of campaigns, battle-fields, laurels, and 
glory ; while, with his arms folded on his breast and his 
head drooping. Uncle Roland gazed into the low clear 
embers. My father cast his eyes round the room, and 
after surveying his brother for some moments, he said, 
almost in a whisper — 

“ My son has seen the Trevanions. They remember us, 
Roland.” 

The Captain sprang to his feet, and began whistling — 
a habit with him when he was much disturbed. 

“ And Trevanion wishes to see us. Pisistratus promised 
to give him our address ; shall he do so; Roland ? ” 

“ If you like it,” answered the Captain, in a military 
attitude, and drawing himself up till he looked seven feet 
high. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


193 


“ I should like it,” said my father, mildly “ Twenty 
years since we met.” 

“ More than twenty,” said my uncle, with. a stern smile ; 
** and the season was — the fall of the leaf ! ” 

“ Man renews the fibre and material of his body every 
seven years,” said my father; “in three times seven years 
he has time to renew the inner man. Can two passengers 
in y«'nder street be more unlike each other than the soul 
is to the soul after an interval of twenty years ? Brother, 
the plough does not pass over the soil in vain, nor care 
over the human heart. New crops change the character 
of the land ; and the plough must go deep indeed before 
it stirs up the mother stone.” 

“Let us see Trevauion,” cried my uncle ; then, turning 
to me, he said, abruptly, “ What family has he ? ” 

“One daughter.” 

“No son ?” 

“No.” 

“ That must vex the poor foolish ambitious man. Oho ! 
you admire this Mr. Trevanion much, eh ? Yes, that fire 
of manner, his fine words, and bold thoughts, were made 
to dazzle youth.” 

“Fine wordvS, my dear uncle I — fire I I should have 
Raid in hearing Mr. Trevanion, that his style of conversa- 
tion was so homely, you would wonder how he could have 
wf)n such fame as a public speaker.” 

“ Indeed 1 ” 

“ The plough has passed there,” said my father. 

I. - n 


N 


194 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ But not the plough of care : rich, famous, Ellinor hia 
wife, and no son I ’’ 

It is because his heart is sometimes sad that he would 
see us.’^ 

Roland stared first at my father, next at me. “ Then,'’ 
quoth my uncle, heartily, “in God’s name, let him come. 
I can shake him by the hand, as I would a brother soldier. 
Poor Trevanion I Write to him at once, Sisty.” 

I sat down and obeyed. When I had sealed my letter, 
I looked up, and saw that Roland was lighting his bed- 
candle at my father’s table ; and my father, taking his 
hand, said something to him in a low voice. I guessed 
it related to his son, for he shook his head, and answered 
in a stern, hollow voice, “Renew grief if you please — 
not shame. On that subject — silence!” 


CHAPTER ly. 

Left to myself in the earlier part of the day, I wan- 
dered, wistful and lonely, through the vast wilderness of 
London. By degrees I familiarized myself with that 
populous solitude — I ceased to pine for the green fields. 
That active energy all around, at first saddening, became 
soon exhilarating, and at last contagious. To an indus- 
trious mind, nothing is so catching as industry. I began 
to grow weary of my golden holiday of unlaborious child- 
hood, to sigh for toil, to look around me for a career, 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


195 


The University, which I had before anticipated with 
pleasure, seemed now to fade into a dull monastic pros- 
pect : after having trod the streets of London, to wander 
through cloisters was to go back in life. Day by day^ 
my mind grew sensibly within me ; it came out from tlie 
rosy twilight of boyhood — it felt the doom of Cain, under 
the broad sun of man. 

Uncle Jack soon became absorbed in his new specula- 
tion for the good of the human race, and, except at meals 
(whereat, to do him justice, he was punctual enough, 
though he did not keep us in ignorance of the sacrifices 
he made, and the invitations he refused, for our sake), 
we seldom saw him. The Captain, too, generally vanished 
after breakfast, seldom dined with us, and it was often 
late before he returned. He had the latch-key of the 
house, and let himself in when he pleased. Sometimes 
(for his chamber was next to mine) his step on the stairs 
awoke me ; and sometimes I heard him pace his room 
with perturbed strides, or fancied that I caught a low 
groan. He became every day more care-worn in appear- 
ance, and every day the hair seemed more grey. Yet he 
talked to us all easily and cheerfully ; and I thought that 
I was the only one in the house who perceived the gnaw- 
ing pangs over which the stout old Spartan drew the 
decorous cloak. 

Pity, blended with admiration, made me curious to learn 
how tnese absent days, that brought nights^ so disturbed, 
were consumed. I felt that, if I could master the Cap- 
tain^s secret, I might win the right both to comfort and 
to aid. 


196 


THE CAXTONS: 


I resolved at length, after many conscientious scruples, 
to endeavor to satisfy a curiosity excused by its motives. 

Accordingly, one morning, after watching him from the 
house, I stole in his track, and followed him at a distance. 

And this was the outline of his day : he set off at first 
with a firm stride, despite his lameness — his gaunt figure 
erect, the soldierly chest well thrown out from the thread- 
bare but speckless coat. First, he took his way towards 
the purlieus of Leicester Square ; several times, to and 
fro, did he pace the isthmus that leads from Piccadilly 
into that reservoir of foreigners, and the lanes and courts 
that start thence towards St. Martin’s. After an hour or 
two so passed, the step became more slow ; and often the 
sleek, napless hat was lifted up, and the brow wiped. At 
length he bent his way towards the two great theatres, 
paused before the play-bills, as if deliberating seriously 
on the chances of entertainment they severally proffered, 
wandered lowly through the small streets that surround 
those temples of the Muse, and finally emerged into the 
Strand. There he rested himself for an hour at a small 
cook-shop ; and, as I passed the window and glanced 
within, I could see him seated before the simple dinner, 
which he scarcely touched, and poring over the advertise- 
ment columns of the Times. The Times finished, and a 
few morsels distastefully swallowed, the Captain put down 
his shilling in silence, receiving his pence in exchange, 
and I had just time to slip aside as he reappeared at the 
threshold, lie looked round as he lingered, but I took 
eare he should not detect me ; and then struck off towards 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


197 


fcne more fashionable quarters of the town. It was now 
the afternoon, and, though not yet the season, the streets? 
swarmed with life. As he came into Waterloo Place, a 
slight but muscular figure buttoned up across the breast 
like his own, cantered by on a handsome bay horse ; every 
eye was on that figure. Uncle Roland stopped short, and 
lifted his hand to his hat ; the rider touched his own with 
his forefinger, and cantered on — Uncle Roland turned 
round and gazed. 

“Who,” I asked, of a shop-boy just before me, also 
staring with all his eyes — “who is that gentleman on 
horseback ? ” 

“Why, the Duke to be sure,” said the boy contempt- 
uously. 

“The Duke?” 

“ Wellington — stu-pid I ” 

“ Thank you,” said I, meekly. Uncle Roland had 
moved on into Regent Street, but with a brisker step : 
the sight of the old chief had done the old soldier good. 
Here again he paced to and fro ; till I, watching him from 
the other side of the way, was ready to drop with fatigue, 
stout walker though I was. But the Captain’s day was 
not half done. He took out his watch, put it to his ear, 
and then, replacing it, passed into Bond Street, and 
thence into Hyde Park. There, evidently wearied out, 
he leant against the rails, near the bronze statue, in an 
attitude that spoke despondency. I seated myself on the 
gi’ass near the statue, and gazed at him : the park was 
empty compared with the streets, but still there were some 
17 * 


198 


THE CAXTONS: 


equestrian idlers, and many foot-loungers. My uncle’s 
eye turned wistfully on each : once or twice, some gentle- 
man of a military aspect (which I had already learned to 
detect) stopped, looked at him, approached, and spoke ; 
but the Captain seemed as if ashamed of such greetings. 
He answered shortly, and turned again. 

The day waned — evening came on : the Captain again 
looked at his watch, shook his head, and made his way to 
a bench, where he sat perfectly motionless — his hat over 
his brows, his arms folded ; till uprose the moon. I had 
tasted nothing since breakfast — I was famished ; but I 
still kept my post like an old Roman sentinel. 

At length the Captain rose, and re-entered Piccadilly; 
but how different his mien and bearing I languid, stoop- 
ing ; his chest sunk, his head inclined ; his limbs dragging 
one after the other ; his lameness painfully perceptible. 
What a contrast in the broken invalid at night from the 
stalwart veteran of the morning I 

How I longed to spring forward to offer my arm I but 
T did not dare. 

The Captain stopped near a cab-stand. He put his 
hand in his pocket — he drew out his purse — he passed 
his fingers over the netw'ork ; the purse slipped again into 
the pocket, and, as if with an heroic effort, my uncle drew 
up his head, and walked on sturdily. 

“ Where next ? ” thought I. “ Surely home I No, he 
is pitiless I ” 

The Captain stopped not till he arrived at one of the 
small theatres in the Strand ; then he read the bill, and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


199 


asked if half-price was begun. “Just begun, was the 
answer, and the Captain entered. I also took a ticket 
and followed. Passing by the open doors of a refresh- 
ment-room, I fortified myself with some biscuits and soda- 
water ; and in another minute, for the first time in my life, 
I beheld a play. But the play did not fascinate me. It 
was the middle of some jocular afterpiece ; roars of 
laughter resounded round me. I could detect nothing to 
laugh at, and sending my keen eyes into every corner, I 
perceived at last, in the uppermost tier, one face as satur- 
nine as my own. Eureka! It was the Captain’s 1 
“ Why should he go to a play, if he enjoys it so little 1 ” 
thought I ; “ better have spent a shilling on a cab, poor 
old fellow I ” 

But soon came smart-looking men, and still smarter- 
looking ladies, around the solitary corner of the poor 
Captain. He grew fidgety — he rose — he vanished. I 
left my place, and stood without the box to watch for 
him. Downstairs he stumped — I recoiled into the shade ; 
and after standing a moment or two, as in doubt, he en- 
tered boldly the refreshment-room or saloon. 

Now, since I had left that saloon, it had become 
crowded, and I slipped in unobserved Strange was it, 
grotesque yet pathetic, to mark the old soldier in the 
midst of that gay swarm. He towered above all like an 
Homeric hero, a head taller than the tallest ; and his 
appearance was so remarkable that it invited the instant 
attention of the fair. I, in my simplicity, thought it was 
the natural tenderness of that amiable and penetrating 


200 


THE CAXTONS: 


sex, ever quick to detect trouble and anxious to relic 
it, which induced three ladies, in silk attire — one having 
a hat and plume, the other two with a profusion of ring- 
lets — to leave a little knot of gentlemen with whom they 
were conversing, and to plant themselves before my 
uncle. I advanced through the press to hear what 
passed. 

“You are looking for some one, I’m sure,” quoth one 
familiarly, tapping his arm with her fan. 

The Captain started. “ Ma’am, you are not wrong,” 
said he. 

“ Can I do as well ?” said one of those compassionate 
angels, with heavenly sweetness. 

“You are very kind, I thank you; no, no, ma’am,” 
said the Captain, with his best bow. 

“Do take a glass of negus,” said another, as her friend 
gave way to her. “ You seem tired, and so am I. Here, 
this way ;” and she took hold of his arm to lead him to 
the table. The Captain shook his head mooirnfully ; and 
then, as if suddenly aware of the nature of the attentions 
so lavished on him, he looked down upon these fairAr- 
midas with a look of such mild reproach, such sweet com- 
passion — not shaking off the hand, in his chivalrous de- 
votion to the sex, which extended even to all its outcasts 
— that each bold eye fell abashed. The hand was timidly 
and involuntarily withdrawn from the arm, and my uncle 
passed on his way. 

He threaded the crowd, passed out at the further door, 
and I, guessing his intention, was in waiting for his steps 
in the street. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


201 


“Now home at last, thank heaven I ” thought I. Mia 
taken still I My uncle went first towards that popular 
haunt which I have since discovered is called “the 
Shades but he soon re-emerged, and finally he knocked 
at the door of a private house in one of the streets out 
of St. James’s. It was opened jealously, and closed as 
he entered, leaving me without. What could this house 
be I As I stood and watched, some other men ap- 
proached, — again the low single knock, — again the jealous 
opening, and the stealthy entrance. 

A policeman passed and repassed me. “ Don’t be 
tei3?pted, young man,” said he, looking hard at me : “ take 
my advice, and go home.” 

“ What is that house, then ? ” said I, with a sort of 
shudder at this ominous warning. 

“Oh, you know.” 

“Not I. I am new to London.” 

“It is a hell,” said the policeman — satisfied, by my 
frank manner, that I spoke the truth. 

“ God bless me — a what I I could not have heard you 
rightly ? ” 

“A hell ; a gambling-house ! ” 

“ Ob I ” and I moved on. Could Captain Roland, the 
rigid, toe thrifty, the penurious, be a gambler? The 
light broke on me at once : the unhappy father sought 
his son I I leant against the post, and tried hard not to 
sob. 

By-and-by, I heard the door open : the Captain came 
am and took the way homeward. I ran on before, and 


202 


THE CAXTONS. 


got in first, to the inexpressible relief both of father and 
mother, who had not seen me since breakfast, and who 
were in equal consternation at my absence. I submitted 
to be scolded with a good grace. “ I had been sight- 
seeing, and lost my way begged for some supper, and 
slunk to bed ; and five minutes afterwards the Captain’s 
jaded o*<ip came wearily up the stairs. 


PART SIXTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

I don’t know that,” said my father. 

What is it my father does not know ? My .ather does 
not know that “ happiness is our being’s end and aim.” 

And pertinent to what does my father reply, by words 
so sceptical, to an assertion so seldom disputed ? 

Reader, Mr. Trevanion has been half an hour seated 
in our little drawing-room. He has received two cups 
of tea from my mother’s fair hand ; he has made himself 
at home. With Mr. Trevanion has come another old 
friend of my father’s, whom he has not seen since he left 
college — Sir Sedley Beaudesert. 

Now, you must understand that it is a warm night, a 
little after nine o’clock — a night between departing sum- 
mer and approaching autumn. The windows are open — 
we have a balcony, which my mother has taken care to 
fill with flowers — the air, though we are in London, is 
sweet and fresh — the street quiet, except that an occa- 
sional carriage or hackney cabriolet rolls rapidly by — a 

( 208 ) 


204 


THE CAXTONS; 


few stealthy passengers pass to and fro noiselessly on 
their way homeward. We are on class’c ground — near 
that old and venerable Museum, the dark monastic pile 
which the taste of the age had spared then — and the 
quiet of the temple seems to hallow the precincts. Cap- 
tain Koland is seated by the fireplace, and, though there 
is no fire, he is shading his face with a hand-screen ; my 
father and Mr. Trevanion have drawn their chairs close 
to each other in the middle of the room ; Sir Sedley 
Beaudesert leans against the wall near the window, and 
behind my mother, who looks prettier and more pleased 
than usual, since her Austin has his old friends about 
him ; and I, leaning my elbow on the table, and my chin 
upon my hand, am gazing with great admiration on Sir 
Sedley Beaudesert. 

0 rare specimen of a race fast decaying ! — specimen 
of the true fine gentleman, ere the word dandy was 
known, and before exquisite became a noun substantive 
— let me here pause to describe thee I Sir Sedley Beau- 
desert was the contemporary of Trevanion and my father ; 
but, without affecting to be young, he still seemed so. 
Dress, tone, look, manner — all were young — yet all had a 
certain dignity which does not belong to youth. At the 
age of five-and-twenty, he had won what would have 
been fame to a French marquis of the old regime, viz. 
the reputation of being “ the most charming man of his 
day” — the most popular of our sex — the most favored, 
rny dear lady-reader, by yours. It is a mistake, I be- 
lieve. to suppose that it does not require talent to become 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


205 


# 

the fashion ; at all events, Sir Sedley was the fashion^ 
and he had talent. He had travelled much, he had read 
much — especially in memoirs, history, and belles-lettres, 

— he made verses with grace and a certain originality of 
easy wit, and courtly sentiment — he conversed delight- 
fully, he was polished and urbane in manner — he was 
brave and honorable in conduct ; in words he could flatter 

— in deeds he was sincere. 

Sir Sedley Beaudesert had never married. Whatever 
his years, he was still young enough in looks to be mar- 
ried for love. He was high-born, he was rich ; he was, 
as I have said, popular ; yet on his fair features there 
was an expression of melancholy ; and on that forehead 

— pure from the lines of ambition, and free from the 
weight of study — there was the shadow of unmistakable 
reg) 

“ t don’t know that,” said my father; “I have never 
yet found in life one man who made happiness his end 
and aim. One wants to gain a fortune, another to spend 
it— one to get a place, another to build a name ; but they 
all know very well that it is not happiness they search 
for. No Utilitarian was ever actuated by self-interest, 
poor man, when he sat down to scribble his unpopular 
crotchets to prove self-interest universal. And as to 
that notable distinction — between self-interest vulgar and 
self-interest enlightened — the more the self-interest is en- 
lightened, the less we are influenced by it. If you tell 
the young man who has just written a fine book or made 
a fine speech, that he will not be any happier if he attain 

L '^18 


206 


THE CAXTONS I 


% 


to thf fame of Milton or the power of Pitt, and that, for 
the sake of his own happiness, he had much better culti- 
vate a farm, live in the country, and postpone to the last 
the days of dyspepsia and gout, he will answer you fairly 
— ‘ I am quite as sensible of that as you are. But I am 
not thinking whether or not I shall be happy. I have 
made up my mind to be, if I can, a great author or a 
prime minister.’ So it is with all the active sons of the 
woili. To push on is the law of nature. And you can 
no more say to men and to nations than to children, — 
‘ Sit still, and don’t wear out your shoes ! ’” 

“Then,” said Trevanion, “if I tell you 1 am not 
happy, your only answer is, that I obey an inevitable law.” 

“No I I don’t say that it is an inevitable law that man 
should not be happy ; but it is an inevitable law that a 
man, in spite of himself, should live for something higher 
than his own happiness. He cannot live in himself or 
for himself, however egotistical he may try to be. Every 
desire he has links him with others. Man is not a ma- 
chine — he is a part of one.” 

“ True, brother, he is a soldier, not an army,” said 
Captain Roland. 

“ Life is a drama, not a monologue,” pursued my father. 
“ Drama is derived from a Greek verb, signifying to do. 
E^ery actor in the drama has something to do, which 
helps on the progress of the whole : that is the object 
for which the author created him. Do your part, and 
let the Great I lay get on.” 

“Ah I ” said Trevanion briskly, “ but to do the part is 


A FAMILY PICTURE 201 

the difficulty I Every actor helps to the catastrophe, and 
yet must do his part without knowing how all is to end. 
Shall he help the curtain to fall on a tragedy or a comedy ? 
Come, I will tell you the one secret of my public life — 
that which explains all its failure (for, in spite of my 
position, I have failed), and its regrets — / want con^ 
viction I ” 

“ Exactly,” said my father ; “because to every question 
there are two sides, aud you look at them both.” 

“ You have said it,” answered Trevanion, smiling also. 
“ For public life a man should be one-sided ; he must act 
with a party ; and a party insists that the shield is silver, 
when, if it will take the trouble to turn the corner, it will 
see that the i;e verse of the shield is gold. Woe to the 
man who makes that discovery alone, while his party are 
still swearing the shield is silver, and that not once in his 
life, but every night I ” 

“You have said quite enough to convince me that you 
ought not to belong to a party, but not enough to 
convince me why you should not be happy,” said my 
father. 

“ Do you remember,” said Sir Sedley Beaudesert, “ an 
anecdote of the first Duke of Portland? He had a 
gallery in the great stable of his villa in Holland, where 
a concert was given once a week, to cheer and amuse his 
Horses ! I have no doubt the horses thrived all the better 
for it. What Trevanion wants is a concert once a week. 
With him it is always saddle and spur. Yet, after all, 
who would not envy him ? If life be a drama, his name 


208 


THE CAXTONS. 


«iands high in the playbill, and is printed in capitals ob 
the walls.” 

“ Envy me I ” cried Trevanion — “ me I — no, you arc 
the enviable man — you who have only one grief in the 
world, and that so absurd a one, that I will make you 
blush by disclosing it. Hear, O sage Austin I — 0 sturdy 
Roland ! — Olivares was haunted by a spectre, and Sedley 
Beaudesert by the dread of old age 1 ” 

“Well,” said my mother seriously, “I do think it re- 
quires a great sense of religion, or, at all events, children 
of one’s own, in whom one is young again, to reconcile 
ones’-self to becoming old.” 

“ My dear ma’am,” said Sir Sedley, who had slightly 
colored at Trevanion’s charge, but had no w^ recovered his 
easy self-possession, “ you have spoken so admirably, that 
you give me courage to confess my weakness. I do dread 
tcf be old. All the joys of my life have been the joys of 
youth. I have had so exquisite a pleasure in the mere 
sense of living, that old age, as it comes near, terrifies me 
by its dull eyes and grey hairs. I have lived the life of a 
butterfly. Summer is over, and I see my flowers wither- 
ing ; and my wings are chilled by the first airs of winter. 
Yes, I envy Trevanion ; for, in public life, no man is ever 
young ; and, while he can work, he is never old.” 

“My dear Beaudesert,” said my father, “when St 
Amable, patron saint of Riom, in Auvergne, went to 
Rome, the sun waited upon him as a servant, carried his 
cloak and gloves for him in the heat, and kept off the 
rain, if the weather changed, like an umbrella. You want 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


209 


to put the sun to the same use ; you are quite right ; but 
then, you see, you must first be a saint before you can be 
sure of the sun as a servant.” 

Sir Sedley smiled charmingly ; but the smile changed 
to a sigh as he added, “ I don’t think I should much mind 
being a saint, if the sun would be my sentinel instead of 
my courier. I want nothing of him but to stand still. 
You see he moved even for St. Amable. My dear madam, 
you and I understand each other ; and it is a very hard 
thing to grow old, do what one will to keep young.” 

“What say you, Roland, of these two malcontents?” 
asked my father. The captain turned uneasily in his chair, 
for the rheumatism was gnawing his shoulder, and sharp 
pains were shooting through his mutilated limb. 

“ I say,” answered Roland, “ that these men are wearied 
with marching from Brentford to Windsor — that they 
have never known the bivouac and the battle.” 

Both the grumblers turned their eyes to the veteran 
the eyes rested first on the furrowed, care-worn lines in his 
eagle face — then they fell on the stiff outstretched cork 
limb — and then they turned away. 

Meanwhile my mother had softly risen, and under pre- 
tence of looking for her work on the table near him, bent 
over the old soldier and pressed his hand. 

“ Gentlemen,” said my father, “ I don’t think my brotlter 
ever heard of Nichocorus, the Greek comic writer ; yet 
he has illustrated him very ably. Saith Nichocorus, ‘ the 
)est cure for drunkenness is a sudden calamity.’ For 
18 * 


0 


210 


THE CAXTONS: 


rhronic drunkenness, a continued course of real misfortune 
must be very salutary I 

No answer came from the two complainants; and my 
father took up a pjreat book. 


CHAPTER II. 

“ My friends,” said my father, looking up from his book, 
and addressing himself to his two visitors, “ I know of 
one thing, milder than calamity, that would do you both 
a great deal of good.” , 

“ What is that ? ” asked Sir Sedley. 

A saffron bag, worn at the pit of the stomach > ” 

“Austin, my dear 1 ” said my mother reprovingly. 

My father did not heed the interruption, but contirued, 
gravely — “Nothing is better for the spirits I Roland is 
in no want of saffron, because he is a warrior ; and ^he 
desire of fighting, and the hope of victory, infuse such a 
heat into the spirits as is profitable for long life, and keeps 
up the system.” 

“ Tut 1 ” said Trevanion. 

“But gentlemen in your predicament must have re 
course to artificial means. Nitre in broth, for instance — 
about three grains to ten — (cattle fed upon nitre grow 
fat) ; or earthy odors — such as exist in cucumbers and 
cabbage. A certain great lord had a clod of fresh earth, 
laid ill a napkin, put under his nose every morning after 


A FxVxMILY PICTUEE. 


211 


sleep. Light anointing of the head with oil, mixed with 
roses and salt, is not bad ; but, upon the whole, I pre- 
scribe the saffron bag at the ” 

‘‘ Sisty, my dear, will you look for my scissors ? ’’ said 
my mother. 

“What nonsense are you talking! Question! ques* 
tion ! ’’ cried Mr. Trevanion. 

“Nonsense !” exclaimed my father, opening his eyes: 
“ I am giving you the advice of Lord Bacon. You want 
conviction — conviction comes from passion — passion from 
the spirits — spirits from a saffron bag. You, Beaudesert, 
on the other hand, want to keep youth. He keeps youth 
longest who lives longest. Nothing more conduces to 
longevity than a saffron bag, provided always it is worn 
at the ” 

“ Sisty, my thimble ! ” said my mother. 

“You laugh at us justly,” said Beaudesert, smiling; 
“ and the same remedy, I dare say, would cure us both ! ” 

“ Yes,” said my father, “there is no doubt of that. In 
the pit of the stomach is that great central web of nerves 
called the ganglions ; thence they affect the head and the 
heart. Mr. Squills proved that to us, Sisty.” 

“ Yes,” said I ; “ but I never heard Mr. Squills talk of 
a saffron bag.” 

“ Oh, foolish boy ! it is not the saffron bag — it is the 
belief in the saffron bag. Apply belief to the centre of 
iie nerves, and all will go well,” said my father. 


212 


THE CAXTONS! 


CHAPTER III. 

‘‘ But it is a devil of a thing to have too nice a con- 
science 1 ” quoth the member of parliament. 

“ And it is not an angel of a thing to lose one’s front 
teeth 1 ” sighed the fine gentleman. 

Therewith my father rose, and putting his hand into 
his waistcoat, more suo, delivered his famous 

SERMON UPON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN FAITH AND 
PURPOSE. 

Pamous it was in our domestic circle. But, as yet, it 
has not gone beyond. And since the reader, I am sure, 
does not turn to the Caxton Memoirs with the expecta- 
tion of finding sermons, so to that circle let its fame be 
circumscribed. All I shall say about it is, that it was a 
very fine sermon, and that it proved, indisputably to me 
at least, the salubrious effect of a saffron bag applied to 
the great centre of the nervous system. But the wise 
Ali saith, that “ a fool doth not know what maketh him 
look little, neither will he hearken to him that adviseth 
him.” I cannot assert that my father’s friends were fools, 
but they certainly came under this definition of 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


213 


CHAPTER ly. 

For iierewith arose, not conviction, but discussion. 
Trevai ion was logical, Beaudesert sentimental. My 
father held firm to the saffron bag. When James the 
First dedicated to the Duke of Buckingham his medita- 
tion on the Lord’s Prayer, he gave a very sensible reason 
for selecting his grace for that honor ; “ For,” saith the 
king, it is made upon a very short and plain prayer, 
and, therefore, the fitter for a courtier, for courtiers are 
for the most part thought neither to have lust nor leisure 
to say long prayers; liking best courte messe et long 
disner.’’^ I suppose it was for a similar reason that my 
father persisted in dedicating to the member of parliament 
and the fine gentleman this “ short and plaine ” morality 
of his — to wit, the saffron bag. He was evidently per- 
suaded, if he could once get them to apply that, it was 
all that was needful ; that they had neither lust nor lei- 
sure for longer instructions. And this saflron bag, — it 
came down with such a whack, at every round in the ar- 
gument ! 'You would have thought my father one of 
the old plebeian combatants in the popular ordeal, who, 
forbidden to use sword and lance, fought with a sand-bag 
tied to a flail : a very stunning weapon it was when filled 
oiilv with sand ; but a bag filled with saffron, — it was ir 


214 


THE CAXTONS; 


resistible I Though my father had two to one against 
him, they could not stand such a deuce of a weapon. 
And after tuts and pishes innumerable from Mr. Treva- 
nion, and sundry bland grimaces from Sir Sedley Beau- 
desert, they fairly gave in, though they would not own 
they were beaten. 

“ Enough,” said the member, “ I see that you don’t 
jomprehend me ; I must continue to move by my own 
impulse.” 

My father’s pet book was the Colloquies of Erasmus ; 
he was wont to say that those Colloquies furnished life 
with illustrations in every page. Out of the Colloquies 
of Erasmus he now answered the member : — 

“Rabirius, wanting his servant Syrus to get up,” 
quoth my father, “cried out to him to move. ‘I do 
move,’ said Syrus. ‘I see you move,’ replied Rabirius, 
‘but you move nothing.' To return to the saffron 
bag ” 

“ Confound the saffron bag I ” cried Trevanion, in a 
rage; and then softening his look as he drew on his 
gloves, he turned to my mother, and said, with more 
politeness than was natural to, or at least customary with 
him — 

“ By the way, my dear Mrs. Caxton, I should tell yon 
that Lady Ellinor comes to town to-morrow, on purpose 
to call on you. We shall be here some little time. Austin ; 
and though London is so empty, there are still some per- 
sons of note to whom I should like to introduce rou, and 

jf 


yours — 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


215 


Nay ” said my father ; “ your world and my world 
are not the same. Books for me, and men for you. 
Neither Kitty nor I can change our habits, even for 
friendship ; she has a great piece of work to finish, and 
BO have I. Mountains cannot stir, especially when in 
labor ; but Mahomet can come to the mountain as often 
as he likes.” 

Mr. Trevanion insisted, and Sir Sedley Beaudesert 
mildly put in his own claims ; both boasted acquaintance 
with literary men, whom my father would, at all events, 
be pleased to meet. My father doubted whether he could 
meet any literary men more eloquent than Cicero, or 
more amusing than Aristophanes ; and observed, that if 
such did exist, he would rather meet them in their books 
than in a drawing-room. In fine, he was immovable; 
and so also, with less argument, was Captain Roland. 

Then Mr. Trevanion turned to me. 

“Your son, at all events, should see something of the 
world. ” 

My mother’s soft eye sparkled. 

“ My dear friend, I thank you,” said my father, touched; 
“and Pisistratus and I will talk it over.” 

Our guests had departed. All four of us gathered to 
the open window, and enjoyed in silence the cool air and 
the moonlight. 

“Austin,” said my mother at last, “ I fear it is for ray 
sake that you refuse going amongst your old friends ; 
you knew I should be frightened by such fine people. 

ttlKl ” 


216 


THE CAXTONS: 


“And we have been happy for more than eighteen years 
without them, Kitty I My poor friends are not happy, 
and we are. To leave well alone is a golden rule worth 
all in Pythagoras. The ladies of Bubastis, my dear, a 
place in Egypt where the cat was worshipped, always 
kept rigidly aloof from the gentlemen in Athribis, who 
adored the shrew-mice. Cats are domestic animals, — 
your shrew-mice are sad gadabouts : you can’t find a 
better model, my Kitty, than the ladies of Bubastis ! ” 

“ How Trevauion is altered I ” said Roland, musingly 
— “ he who was so lively and ardent I ” 

“ He ran too fast up-hill at first, and has been out of 
breath ever since,” said my father. 

“And Lady Ellinor,” said Roland, hesitatingly, “shall 
you see her to-morrow ? ” 

“ Yes,” said my father, calmly. 

As Captain Roland spoke, something in the tone of 
his question seemed to flash a conviction on my mother’s 
heart, — the woman there was quick : she drew back, turn- 
ing pale, even in the moonlight, and fixed her eyes on my 
father, while I felt her hand which had clasped mine 
tremble convulsively. 

I understood her. Yes, this Lady Ellinor was the 
early rival whose name till then she had not known. 
Slie fixed her eyes on my father, and at his tranquil tone 
and quiet look she breathed more freely, and, sliding her 
hand from mine, rested it fondly on his shoulder. A few 
moments afterwards, I and Captain Roland found our 
selves standing alone by the window 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


211 


“You are young, nephew,” said the Captain; “and 
you have the name of a fallen family to raise. Your 
father does well not to reject for you that opening into 
the great world which Trevanion offers. As for me, my 
business in London seems over : I cannot find what I 
came to seek. I have sent for my daughter ; when she 
arrives I shall return to my old tower; and the man and 
the ruin will crumble away together.” 

“ Tush, uncle ! I must work hard and get money ; and 
then we will repair the old tower, and buy back the old 
estate. My father shall sell the red brick house ; we 
will fit him up a library in the keep ; and we will all live 
united, in peace, and in state, as grand as our ancestors 
before us.” 

While I thus spoke, my uncle’s eyes were fixed upon 
a corner of the street, wdiere a figure, half in shade,' half 
in moonlight, stood motionless. “ Ah I ” said I, follow- 
ing his eye, “ I have observed that man, two or three 
times, pass up and down the street on the other side of 
the way, and turn his head towards our wdndow. Our 
guests were with us then, and my father in full discourse, 
or I should have ” 

Before I could finish the sentence, my uncle, stifling 
an exclamation, broke away, hurried out of the room, 
stumped down the stairs, and was in the street, wdiile I 
was yet rooted to the spot with surprise. I remained at 
the window, and my eye rested on the figure. I saw the 
Captain, with his bare head and his grey hair, cross the 
street ; the figure started, turned tlie corner, and fled. 

I. ^ 19 


218 


THE C AXTONS : 


Then I followed my uncle, and arrived in time to si ft 
him from falling : he leant his head on my breast, and I 
heard him murmur, — “ It is he — it is he I lie has wab led 
us 1 — he repents I ” 


C H A P T E R V 

The next day Lady Ellinor called ; but, to my great 
disappointment, without Fanny. 

Whether or not some joy at the incident of the previ- 
ous night had served to rejuvenate my uncle, I know not, 
but he looked to me ten years younger when Lady Ellinor 
entered. How carefully the buttoned-up coat was brushed I 
how new and glossy was the black stock ! The poor Cap- 
tain was restored to his pride, and mighty proud he 
looked I With a glow on his cheek, and a fire in his eye ; 
his head thrown back, and his whole air composed, severe, 
Mavortian, and majestic, as if awaiting the charge of the 
French cuirassiers at the head of his detachment. 

My father, on the contrary, was as usual (till dinner, 
when he always dressed punctiliously, out of respect to 
his Kitty) in his easy morning-gown and slippers ; and 
nothing but a certain compression in his lips, which had 
lasted all the morning, evinced his anticipation of the 
visit, or the emotion it caused him. 

Lady Ellinor behaved beautifully. She could not con • 
:fal a certain nervous trepidation, when she first took the 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


219 


hand my father extended ; and, in touching rebuke of the 
Captain’s stately bow, she held out to him the hand left 
disengaged, with a look which brought Roland at once 
to her side. It was a desertion of his colors to which 
nothing, short of Ney’s shameful conduct at Napoleon’s 
return from Elba, affords a parallel in history. Then, 
without waiting for introduction, and before a word in- 
deed was said. Lady Ellinor came to my mother so cor- 
dially, so caressingly — she threw into her smile, voice, 
manner, such winning sweetness, that I, intimately learned 
in my poor mother’s simple loving heart, wondered how 
she refrained from throwing her arms round Lady Elli- 
nor’s neck and kissing her outright. It must have been 
a great conquest over herself not to do it I My tur 
came next ; and talking to me, and about me, soon se'; 
all parties at their ease — at least apparently. 

What was said I cannot remember ; I do not think ont 
of us could. But an hour slipped away, and there was 
no gap in the conversation. 

With curious interest, and a survey I strove to make 
impartial, I compared Lady Ellinor with my mother. 
And I comprehended the fascination which the high-born 
lady must, in their earlier youth, have exercised over both 
brothers, so dissimilar to each other. For charm was 
the characteristic of Lady Ellinor — a charm indefinable. 
It was not the mere grace of refined breeding, though 
that w(int a great way : it was a charm that seemed to 
spring from natural sympathy. Whomsoever she ad- 
dressed, that person ai)peared for the moment to engage 


220 


THE c A T 0 N s : 


all her attention, to interest her whole mind. She had a 
gift of conversation very peculiar. She made what she 
said like a continuation of what was said to her. She 
seemed as if she had entered into your thoughts, and 
talked them aloud. Her mind was evidently cultivated 
with great care, but she was perfectly void of pedantry. 
A hint, an allusion, sufficed to show how much she knew, 
to one well instructed, without mortifying or perplexing 
the ignorant. Yes, there probably was the only woman 
my father had ever met who could be the companion to 
his mind, walk through the garden of knowledge by his 
side, and trim the flowers while he cleared the vistas. On 
the other hand, there was an inborn nobility in Lady E' 
linor’s sentiments that must have struck the most suscep 
tible chord in Roland’s nature, and the sentiments took 
eloquence from the look, the mien, the sweet dignity of 
the very turn of the head. Yes, she must have been a 
fitting Oriana to a young Amadis. It was not hard to 
see that Lady Ellinor was ambitious — that she had a love 
of fame, for fame itself — that she was proud — that she 
set value (and that morbidly) on the world’s opinion. 
This was perceptible when she spoke of her husband, 
even of her daughter. It seemed to me as if she valued 
the intellect of the one, the beauty of the other, by the 
gauge of the social distinction it conferred. She took 
measure of the gift as I was taught at Dr. Herman’s to 
take measure of the height of a tower — by the length oT 
the shadow it cast upon the ground. 

My dear father I with such a wife you would never 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


221 


have lived eighteen years, shivering on the edge of a 
Great Book. 

My dear uncle, with such a wife you would never have 
been contented with a cork leg and a Waterloo medal 1 
And I understand why Mr. Trevanion, “eager and 
ardent ’’ as ye say he was in youth, with a heart bent on 
the practical success of life, won the hand of the heiress. 
Well, you see Mr. Trevanion has contrived not to be 
happy ! By the side of my listening, admiring mother, 
with her blue eyes moist, and her coral lips apart, Lady 
Ellinor looks faded. Was she ever as pretty as my mo- 
ther is now ? Never. But she was much handsomer. 
What delicacy in the outline, and yet how decided i' 
spite of the delicacy I The eyebrow so defined — the pro- 
file slightly aquiline, so clearly cut — with the curved nos- 
tril, which, if physiognomists are right, shows sensibility 
so keen ; and the classic lip, that, but for the neighbor- 
ing dimple, would be so haughty. But wear and tear 
are in that face. The nervous excitable temper has 
helped the fret and cark of ambitious life. My dear 
uncle, I know not yet your private life. But as for my 
father, I am sure that, though he might have done more 
on earth, he would have been less fit for heaven, if he had 
married Lady Ellinor. 

At last this visit — dreaded, I am sure, by three of the 
party, was over, but not before I had promised to dine at 
the Trevanions^ that day. 

When we were again alone, my father threw off a long 
Dreath, and, looking round him cheerfully, said, “ Since 
19* 


222 


THE CAX'JONS: 


Pisistratus deserts us, let us console ourselves for his ab 
sence — send for brother Jack, and all four go down tc 
Hichmond to drink tea.” 

“Thank you, Austin,” said Roland; “but I don’t 
want it, I assure you I ” 

“Upon your honor?” said my father, in a half- 
whisper. 

“Upon my honor.” 

“ Nor I either ! So, my dear Kitty, Roland and I will 
take a walk, and be back in time to see if that young 
Anachronism looks as handsome as his new London-made 
clothes will allow him. Properly speaking, he ought to 
go with an apple in his hand, and a dove in his bosom. 
But now that I think of it, that was luckily not the 
fashion with the Athenians till the time of Alcibiades I ” 


CHAPTER Yl. 

You may judge of the effect that my dinner at Mi. 
Trevanion’s, with a long conversation after it with Lady 
Ellinor, made upon my mind, when, on my return home, 
after having satisfied all questions of parental curiosity, 

I said nervously, and looking down, — “ My dear father, 

I should like very much, if you have no objection to 

to ” 

“ What, my dear ? ” asked my father kindly. 

“Accept an offer Lady Ellinor has made me, on the 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 223 

part of Mr. Trevanion. He wants a secretary. He is 
kind enough to excuse my inexperience, and declares T 
shall do very well, and can soon get into his ways. Lady 
Ellinor says (I continued with dignity) that it will be a 
great opening in public life for me ; and at all events, my 
dear father, I shall see much of the world, and learn what 
I really think will be more useful to me than anything 
they will teach me at college.’’ 

My mother looked anxiously at my father. “ It will 
indeed be a great thing for Sisty,” said she, timidly ; and 
then, taking courage, she added — “and that is just the 
sort of life he is formed for.” 

“ Hem 1 ” said my uncle. 

My father rubbed his spectacles thoughtfully, and re- 
plied, after a long pause, — 

“You may be right, Kitty: I don’t think Pisistratu? 
is meant for study ; action will suit him better. But what 
does this office lead to?” 

“Public employment, sir,” said I boldly; “the service 
of my country.” 

“ If that be the case,” quoth Roland, “ I have not a 
word to say. But I should have thought that for a lad 
of spirit, a descendant of the old De Caxtons, the army 
would have ” 

“ The army I ” exclaimed my mother, clasping hei 
hands, and looking involuntarily at my uncle’s cork leg. 

“ The army I ” repeated my father, peevishly. “Bless 
my soul, Roland, you seem to think man is made for 
nothing else but to be shot at I You would not like the 
army, Pisistratus ? ” 


224 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ Why, sir, not if it pained you and my dear mother • 
otherwise, indeed 

“ Pap® I” said my father, interrupting me. “ This all 
comes of your giving the boy that ambitious, uncomfort- 
able name, Mrs. Caxton ; what could a Pisistratus be but 
the plague of one’s life ? That idea of serving his coun- 
try is Pisistratus ipsisimus all over. If ever I have an- 
other son {DU meliora!) he has only got to be called 
Eratostratus, and then he will be burning down St. Paul’s ; 
which I believe was, by the way, first made out of the 
stones of a temple to Diana I Of the two, certainly, you 
had better serve your country with a goose-quill than by 
poking a bayonet into the ribs of some unfortunate Indian ; 
I don’t think there are any other people whom the service 
of one’s country makes it necessary to kill just at present, 
eh, — Roland ? ” 

“It is a very fine field, India,” said my uncle, senten- 
tiously : “ it is the nursery of captains.” 

“ Is it I Those plants take up a great deal of ground, 
then, that might be more profitably cultivated. And, 
indeed, considering that the tallest captains in the world 
will be ultimately set into a box not above seven feet at 
the longest, it is astonishing what a quantity of room 
that species of arbor moiiis takes in the growing ! How- 
ever Pisistratus, to return to ypur request, I will think it 
over and talk to Trevanion.” 

“ Or rather to Lady Ellinor;” said I imprudently : my 
mother slightly shivered, and took her hand from mino. 
I felt cut to the heart by the slip of my own tongue. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


225 


“ That, I think, your mother could do best,” said my 
father, drily, “ if she wants to be quite convinced that 
somebody will see that your shirts are aired. For I sup- 
pose they mean you to lodge at Trevauion’s.” 

“ Oh, no 1 ” cried my mother ; “ he might as well go to 
college then. I thought he was to stay with us ; only go 
in the morning, but, of course, sleep here.” 

“ If I know anything of Trevanion,” said my father, 
“his secretary will be expected to do without sleep. 
Poor boy I you don’t know what it is you desire. And 
yet, at your age, I ” — my father stopped short. “ No I ” 
he renewed abruptly after a long silence, and as if solilo- 
quising — “No: man is never wrong while he lives for 
others. The philosopher who contemplates from the 
rock is a less noble image than the sailor who struggles 
with the storm. Why should there be two of us ? And 
could he be an alter ego, even if I wished it ? Impos- 
sible I ” My father turned on his chair, and laying the 
left leg on the right knee, said smilingly, as he bent down 
to look me full in the face: “But, Pisistratus, will you 
promise me always to wear the saffron bag ? ” 


3 


THE CAXTONSi 


226 


CHAPTER YII. 

I r«ow make a long stride in my narrative. I am 
domesticated with the Trevanions. A very short con- 
versation with the statesman sufficed to decide my father ; 
and the pith of it lay in this single sentence uttered by 
Trevanion — “ I promise you one thing — he shall never 
be idle 1 

Looking back, I am convinced that my father was right, 
and that he understood my character, and the temptations 
to which I was most prone, when he consented to let me 
I’esign college and enter thus prematurely on the world 
of men. I was naturally so joyous, that I should have 
made college life a holiday, and then, in repentance, 
worked myself into a phthisis. 

And my father, too, was right, that, though I could 
study, I was not meant for a student. 

After all, the thing was an experiment. I had time to 
spare : if the experiment failed, a year’s delay would not 
necessarily be a year’s loss 

I am ensconced, then, at Mr. Trevanion’s. I have been 
there some months — it is late in the winter ; parliament 
and the season have commenced. I work hard — Heaven 
knows harder than I should have worked at college 
Take a day for sample. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


227 


Trevanion gets up at eight o’clock, and in all weathers 
riies an hour before breakfast ; at nine he takes that mea. 
in his wife’s dressing-room ; at half-past nine he comes 
into his study. By that time he expects to find done by 
his secretary the work I am about to describe. 

On coming home, or rather before going to bed, which 
is usually after three o’clock, it is Mr. Trevanion’s habit 
to leave on the table of the said study a list of directions 
for the secretary. The following, which I take at random 
from many I have preserved, may show their multifarious 
nature : — 

1. Look out in the Reports (Committee House of Lords) for the 
last seven years — all that is said about the growth of flax — mark 
the passages for me. 

2. Do. do. — “Irish Emigration.” 

3. Hunt out second volume of Karnes’s History of Man, passage 
containing “ Reid’s Logic” — don’t know where the book is ! 

4. How does the line beginning “Lumina conjurent, inter” 
something, end ? Is it in Gray ? See ! 

6. Fracastorius writes — “ Quantum hoc infecit vitium, quot adi- 
verit urbes.” Query, ought it not in strict grammar, to be — infe- 
cerit instead of infecit 9 — if you don’t know, write to father. 

6. Write the four letters in full from the notes I leave, i. e. about 
the Ecclesiastical Courts. 

7. Look out Population Returns — strike average of last five years 
(between mortality and births) in Devonshire and Lancashire. 

8. Answer these six begging letters, “No ” — civilly. 

9. The other six, to .constituents — “ that 1 have no interest with 
Government.” 

10. See, if you have time, whether any of the new books on the 
round table are not trash. 

11. I want to know all about Indian corn? 

12. Longinus says something, somewhere, in regret for uncon- 
genial pursuits (public life, I suppose) — what is it? N.B. Longi- 
nus is not in my London Catalogue, but is here, I know — I think 
in a box in the lumber-room. 


228 


THE CAXTONS: 


13. Set right the calculation I leave on the poor-rates. I have 
made a blunder somewhere. &c. &c. 

Certainly my father knew Mr. Trevanion ; he never 
expected a secretary to sleep 1 To get through the work 
required of me by half-past nine, I get up by candle-light. 
At half-past nine I am still hunting for Longinus, when 
Mr Trevanion comes in with a bundle of letters. 

Answers to half the said letters fall to my share. Di- 
rections verbal — in a species of short-hand talk. While 
I write, Mr. Trevanion reads the newspapers — examines 
what I have done — makes notes therefrom — some for 
Parliament, some for conversation, some for correspond- 
ence — skims over the Parliamentary papers of the morn- 
ing — and jots down directions for extracting, abridging, 
and comparing them with others, perhaps twenty years 
old. At eleven he walks down to a Committee of the 
House of Commons — leaving me plenty to do — till half- 
past three, when he returns. At four, Fanny puts her 
head into the room — and I lose mine. Four days in the 
week Mr. Trevanion then disappears for the rest of the 
day — dines at Bellamy’s or a club — expects me at the 
House at eight o’clock, in case he thinks of something, 
wants a fact or a quotation. He then releases me— gene- 
rally with a fresh list of instructions. But I have my 
holidays, nevertheless. On Wednesdays and Saturdays 
Mr. Trevanion gives dinners, and I meet the most emi- 
nent men of the day — on both sides. For Trevanion ia 
on both sides himself — or no side at all, which comes to 
ihe same thing. On Tuesdays, Lady Ellinor gives me a 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


229 


ticket for the Opera, and I get there at least in time for 
the ballet. I have already invitations enough to balls 
and soirees, for I am regarded as an only son of great 
expectations. I am treated as becomes a Caxton who 
has the right, if he pleases, to put a De before his name. 
I have grown very smart. I have taken a passion for 
dress — natural to eighteen. I like everything I do, and 
every one about me. I am over head and ears in love 
with Fanny Trevanion, who breaks my heart, neverthe- 
less ; for she flirts with two peers, a life-guardsman, three 
old members of parliament. Sir Sedley Beaudesert, one 
•ambassador, and all his attaches, and, positively (the au- 
dacious minx !) with a bishop, in full wig and apron, who, 
people say, means to marry again. 

Pisistratus has lost color and flesh. His mother says 
he is very much improved , — that he takes to be the natu- 
ral effect produced by Stultz and Iloby. Uncle Jack 
says he is “fined down.’^ 

His father looks at him and writes to Trevanion, — 

“ Dear T. — I refused a salary for my son. Give him 
a horse, and two hours a day to ride it. 

Yours, A. C.’^ 

The next day I am master of a pretty bay mare, a’:id 
riding by the side of Fannv Trevanion Alas I alas 1 


T —20 


230 


THE CAXTONS: 


CHAPTER YIII. 

I HAVE not mentioned my Uncle Roland. He is gone 
—abroad — to fetch his daughter. He has stayed longer 
than was expected. Does he seek his son still — there as 
here ? My father has finished the first portion of his 
work, in two great volumes. Uncle Jack, who for some 
time has been looking melancholy, and who now seldom 
stirs out, except on Sundays (on which days we all meet 
at my father’s and dine together) — Uncle Jack, 1 say, has 
undertaken to sell, it. 

“ Don’t be over sanguine,” says Uncle Jack, as he locks 
up the MS. in two red boxes with a slit in the lids, which 
belonged to one of the defunct companies. “ Don’t be 
over sanguine as to the price. These publishers never 
venture much on a first experiment. They must be talked 
even into looking at the book.” 

“ Oh ! ” said my father, “ if they will publish it at all, 
and at their own risk, I should not stand out for any 
other terms. ‘Nothing great,’ said Dryden, ‘overcame 
from a venal pen I ’ ” 

“An uncommonly foolish observation of Dryden’s,” 
returned Uncle Jack : “ he ought to have known l^etter.’’ 

“So he did,” said I, “for he used his pen to fill his 
pockets — ooor man I ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


231 


“But the pen was not venal, master Anachronism,” 
said my father, “A baker is not to be called venal if 
he sells his loaves — he is venal if he sells himself : Dryden 
only sold his loaves.” 

“And we must sell yours,” said Uncle Jack, emphati- 
cally. “A thousand pounds a volume will be about the 
mark, eh ? ” 

“A thousand pounds a volume!” cried my fathei 
“Gibbon, I fancy, did not receive more.” 

“Very likely ; Gibbon had not an Uncle Jack to look 
after his interests,” said Mr. Tibbets, laughing and rub- 
bing those smooth hands of his. “No! two thousand 
pounds the two volumes ! a sacrifice, but still I recom- 
mend moderation.” 

“I should be happy, indeed, if the book brought in 
anything,” said my father, evidently fascinated ; “for that 
young gentleman is rather expensive ; and you, my dear 
Jack ; — perhaps half the sum may be of use to you ! ” 

“To me! my dear brother,” cried Uncle Jack — “to 
me ! why when my new speculation has succeeded, I shall 
be a millionnaire ! ” 

“ Have you a new speculation, uncle ? ” said I anx- 
iously. “ What is it ! ” 

“ Mum ! ” said my uncle, putting his finger to his lip, 
and looking all round the room — Mum ! ! Mum ! ! ” 

PisiSTRATUS. — “A Grand National Company for 
’^lowing up both Houses of Parliament ! ” 

Mr. Caxton. — “ Upon my life, I hope something newer 
ihan that ; for they, to judge by the newspapers, don’t 
want brother Jack’s assistance to blow up each other !” 


232 


THE CAXTONS: 


Uncle Jack (mysteriously.) — ''Newspapers! you 
don’t often read a newspaper, Austin Caxton I ” 

Mr. Caxton. — " Granted, John Tibbets 1 ” 

Uncle Jack. — " But if my speculation make you read 
a newspaper every day ? ” 

Mr. Caxton (astounded). — “Make me read a news- 
paper every day I ” 

Uncle Jack (warming, and expanding his hands to 
the fire). — “As big as the Times P' 

Mr. Caxton (uneasily). — Jack, you alarm me 1^’ 
Uncle Jack. — “And make you write in it too — a 
leader I 

Mr. Caxton, pushing back his chair, seizes the only 
weapon at his command, and hurls at Uncle Jack a great 
sentence of Greek — “Twj fi&v yap fipai ;^aXfrtovf, oas “at 
avOpujTto^ayttv I ” * 

Uncle Jack (nothing daunted). — “Ay, and put as 
much Greek as you like into it I ” 

Mr. Caxton (relieved and softening). — “ My dea; 
Jack, you are a great man — let us hear you ! ” 

Then Uncle Jack began. Now, perhaps my readers 
may have remarked that this illustrious speculator was 
i'pally fortunate in his ideas. His speculations in them- 
selves always had something sound in the kernel, con- 
sideriiig how barren they were in the fruit ; and this it 

* “ Some were so barbarous as to eat their own species.” The 
sentence refers to the Scythians, and is in Strabo. I mention tho 
authority, for Strabo is not an author that any man engaged on a 
less work than the History of Human Error is expected to have 
by heart. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


23a 


was that made him so dangerous. The idea Uncle Jack 
had now got hold of will, I am convinced, make a man’s 
fortune one of these days ; and I relate it with a sigh, in 
thinking how much has gone out of the family. Know 
then, it was nothing less than setting up a daily paper on 
the plan of the Times, but devoted entirely to Art, Lite- 
rature, and Science — Mental Progress, in short; I say, 
on the plan of the Times, for it was to imitate the mighty 
machinery of the diurnal illuminator. It was to be the 
Literary Salmoneus of the Political Jupiter, and rattle 
its thunder over the bridge of knowledge. It was to 
have correspondents in all parts of the globe ; everything 
that related to the chronicle of the mind, from the labor 
of the missionary in the South Sea Islands, or the re- 
search of a traveller in pursuit of that mirage called Tim- 
buctoo, to the last new novel at Paris, or the last great 
emendation of a Greek particle at a German university, 
was to find a place in this focus of light. It was to 
amuse, to instruct, to interest — there was nothing it was 
not to do. Not a man in the whole reading public, not 
only of the three kingdoms, not only of the British em- 
pire, but under the cope of heaven, that it was not to 
touch somewhere, in head, in heart, or in pocket. The 
most crotchety member of the intellectual community 
might find his own hobby in those stables. 

“ Think,” cried Uncle Jack, — “think of the march of 
mind — think of the passion for cheap knowledge — think 
now little quarterly, monthly, weekly journals can keep 
3ace with the main wants of the age. As well have a 
20 * 


234 


THE C AXTONS : 


weekly joanial on politics, as a weekly journal on all the 
matters still more interesting than politics to the mass of 
the public. My Literary Times once started, people will 
wonder how they had ever lived without it I Sir, they 
have not lived without it — they have vegetated — they 
have lived in holes and caves, like the Troggledikes.” 

“ Troglodytes,” said my father, mildly — “ from trogle, 
a cave — and dumi, to go under. They lived in Ethiopia, 
and had their wives in common.” 

“As to the last point, I don’t say that the public, poor 
creatures, are as bad as that,’’ said Uncle Jack, candidly ; 
“ but no simile holds good in all its points. And the 
public are no less Troggledummies, or whatever you call 
them, compared with what they will be when living under 
the full light of ray Literary Times. Sir, it will be a re- 
volution in the world. It will bring literature out of the 
clouds into the parlor, the cottage, the kitchen. The 
idlest dandy, the finest fine lady, will find something to 
her taste ; the busiest man of the mart and counter will 
find some acquisition to his practical knowledge. The 
practical man will see the progress of divinity, medicine, 
nay, even law. Sir, the Indian will read me under the 
banyan ; I shall be in the seraglios of the East ; and 
over my sheets the American Indian will smoke the calu- 
met of peace. We shall reduce politics to its proper 
level in the affairs of life— raise literature to its due place 
in the thoughts and business of men. It is a grand 
thought ; and my heart swells with pride \shilo I contem* 
plate it I ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


285 


My dear Jack,” said my father, seriously, and rising 
?ith emotion, “ it is a grand thouglit, and I honor ycu 
or it. You are quite right — it would be a revolution I 
would educate mankind insensibly. Upon my life, I 
hould be proud to write a leader, or a paragraph. Jack, 
ou will immortalize yourself I” 

“ I believe I shall,” said Uncle Jack, modestly ; “ but 
have not said a word yet on the greatest attractions of 
ill.” 

^‘Ah ! and that ? ” 

“ The Advertisements I ” cried my uncle, spreading 
jis hands with all the fingers at angles, like the threads 
of a spider’s web. “ The advertisements — oh, think of 
them I — a perfect El Dorado. The advertisements, sir, 
on the most moderate calculation, will bring us in £50,000 
a year. My dear Pisistratus, I shall never marry ; you 
are my heir. Embrace me 1 ” 

So saying, my Uncle Jack threw himself upon me, and 
squeezed out of breath the prudential demur that was 
rising to my lips. 

My poor mother, between laughing and sobbing, 
faltered out — “And it is my brother who will pay back 
to his son all — all he gave up for me ! ” 

While my father walked to and fro the room, more 
excited than ever I saw him before, muttering, “A sad 
useless dog I have been hitherto 1 I should like to serve 
the world ! I should indeed I ” 

Uncle Jack had fairly done it this time. He had found 
dut the only bait in the world to catch so shy a carp as 


236 


THE CAXTONS. 


my father — ^^hoeret lethalis arundo.^^ I saw that the 
deadly hook was within an inch of my father’s nose, and 
that he was gazing at it with a fixed determination to 
swallow. 

But if it amused my father ? Boy that I was, I saw 
no further. I must own I myself was dazzled, and, per- 
haps with childlike malice, delighted at the perturbation 
of my betters. The young carp was pleased to see the 
waters so playfully in movement, when the old carp waved 
his tail, and swayed himself on his fins. 

“ Mum 1 ” said Uncle Jack, releasing me ; “ not a word 
to Mr. Trevanion, to any one.” 

“ But why ? ” 

“ Why ? God bless my soul. Why ? If my scheme 
gets wind, do you suppose some one will not clap on sail 
to be before me ? You frighten me out of my senses. 
Promise me faithfully to be silent as the grave.” 

“I should like to hear Trevanion’s opinion too.” 

“As well hear the town-crier ! Sir, I have trusted to 
your honor. Sir, at the domestic hearth all secrets are 
sacred. Sir, I ” 

“My dear Uncle Jack, you have said quite enough. 
Not a word will I breathe 1” 

“I’m sure you may trust him. Jack,” said my mother. 

“And I do trust him — with wealth untold,” replied my 
uncle. “May I ask you for a little water — with a trifle 
of brandy in it — and a biscuit, or indeed a sandwich. 
This talking makes me quite hungry.” 

My eye fell upon Uncle Jack as he spoke. Poor Uncle 
Jack, he had grown thin 1 


PART SEVENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

Saith Dr. Luther, “ When I saw Dr. Gode begin to 
Ull his puddings hanging in the chimney, I told him be 
would not live long I ’’ 

I wish I had copied that passage from “The Table 
Talk” in large round hand, and set it before my father at 
breakfast, the morn preceding that fatal eve in which 
Uncle Jack persuaded him to tell his puddings. 

Yet, now I think of it. Uncle Jack hung the puddings 
in the chimney, — but he did not persuade my father to 
tell them. 

Beyond a vague surmise that half the suspended 
“ tomacula ” would furnish a breakfast to Uncle Jack, and 
that the youthful appetite of Pisistratus would despatch 
the rest, my father did not give a thought to the nutritious 
properties of the puddings, — in other words, to the two 
thousand pounds which, thanks to Mr. Tibbets, dangled 
down the chimney. So far as the Great Work was con- 
cerned, my father only cared for its publication, not its 

( 237 ) 


238 


THE CAXTONS: 


profits. I will not say that lie might not hunger for 
praise, but I am quite sure that he did not care a button 
for pudding. Nevertheless, it was an infaust and sinister 
augury for Austin Caxton, the very appearance, the very 
suspension and danglement of any puddings whatsoever, 
right over his i.igle-nook, when those puddings were made 
by the sleek hands of Uncle Jack I None of the pud- 
dings which he, poor man, had all his life been stringing, 
whether from his own chimneys, or the chimneys of other 
people, had turned out to be real puddings, — they had 
always been the eidola, the erscheinungen, the phantoms 
and semblances of puddings. I question if Uncle Jack 
knew much about Democritus of Abdera. But he was 
certainly tainted with the philosophy of that fanciful sage. 
He peopled the air with images of colossal stature which 
impressed all his dreams and divinations, and from whose 
influences came his very sensations and thoughts. His 
whole being, asleep or waking, was thus but the reflection 
of great phantom puddings I 

As soon as Mr. Tibbits had possessed himself of the 
two volumes of the “ History of Human Error,” he had 
necessarily established that hold upon my father which 
‘itherto those lubricate hands of his had failed to effect. 
He had found what he had so long sighed for in vain, his 
point d^appui, wherein to fix the Archimedian screw. 
He fixed it tight in the “ History of Human Error,” and 
moved the Caxtonian world. 

A day or two after the conversation recorded in my 
last chapter, I saw Uncle Jack coming out of the mahog 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


239 


any doors of my father’s banker ; and, from time to time, 
there seemed no reason why Mr. Tibbets should not visit 
his relations on week-days as well as Sundays. Not a 
day, indeed, passed but what he held long conversations 
with my father. He had much to report of his interviews 
with the publishers. In these conversations he naturally 
recurred to that grand idea of the “ Literary Times,” 
which had so dazzled my poor father’s imagination ; and, 
having heated the iron. Uncle Jack was too knowing a 
man not to strike while it was hot. ' 

When I think of the simplicity my wise father exhibited 
in this crisis of his life, I must own that I am less moved 
by pity than admiration for that poor great-hearted stu- 
dent. We have seen that out of the learned indolence of 
twenty years, the ambition which is the instinct of a man 
of genius had emerged ; the serious preparation of the 
Great Book for the perusal of the world, had insensibly 
restored the claims of that noisy world on the silent indi- 
vidual. And therewith came a noble remorse that he had 
hitherto done so little for his species. Was it enough to 
write quartos upon the past history of Human Error ? 
Was it not his duty, when the occasion was fairly pre- 
sented, to enter upon that present, daily, hourly war with 
]i]rror — which is the sworn. chivalry of Knowledge ? St. 
George did not dissect dead dragons, he fought the live 
one. And London, with that magnetic atmosphere which 
in great capitals fills the breath of life with stimulating 
particles, had its share in quickening the slow pulse of the 
student. In the country, he read but his old authors, and 


240 


THE CAXTONS: 


lived with them through the gone ages. In the city, my 
father, during the intervals of repose from the Great 
Book, and still more now that the Great Book had come 
to a pause, — inspected the literature of his own time. It 
had a prodigious effect upon him. He was unlike the 
ordinary run of scholars, and, indeed, of readers for that 
matter — who, in their superstitious homage to the dead, 
are always willing enough to sacrifice the living. He did 
justice to the marvellous fertility of intellect which 
characterizes the authorship of the present age. By the 
present age, I do not only mean the present day, I com- 
mence with the century. “What,” said my father one 
day in dispute with Trevanion — “ what characterizes the 
literature of our time is — its human interest . It is true 
that we do not see scholars addressing scholars, but men 
addressing men, — not that scholars are fewer, but that 
the reading public is more large. Authors in all ages 
address themselves to what interests their readers ; the 
same things do not interest a vast community which inter- 
ested half a score of monks or book-worms. The literary 
polis was once an oligarchy, it is now a republic. It is 
the general brilliancy of the atmosphere which prevents 
your noticing the size of any particular star. Do you not 
see that with the cultivation of the masses has awakened 
the Literature of the Affections ? Every sentiment finds 
an expositor, every feeling an oracle. Like Epimenides, 
I have been sleeping in a cave ; and, waking, I see those 
whom I left children are bearded men ; and towns have 
sprung up ill the landscapes which I left as solitary wastes.” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


241 


Thence the reader may perceive the causes of the change 
which had come over my father. As Robert Hall says, 
I think of Dr. Kippis, “ he had laid so many books at 
the top of his head, that the brains could not move.’’ 
But the electricity had now penetrated the heart, and the 
quickened vigor of that noble organ enabled the brain to 
stir. Meanwhile, I leave my father to these influences, 
and to the continuous conversations of Uncle Jack, and 
proceed with the thread of my own egotism. 

Thanks to Mr. Trevanion, my habits were not those 
which favor friendships with the idle, but I formed some 
acquaintances amongst young men a few years older than 
myself, who held subordinate situations in the public 
offices, or were keeping their terms for the bar. There 
was no want of ability amongst these gentlemen ; but they 
had not yet settled into the stern prose of life. Their 
busy hours only made them more disposed to enjoy the 
hours of relaxation. And when we got together, a very 
gay, light-hearted set we were I We had neither money 
enough to be very extravagant, nor leisure enough to be 
very dissipated ; but we amused ourselves notwithstand- 
ing. My new friends were wonderfully erudite in all 
maitors connected with the theatres. From an opera to 
a ballet, from Hamlet to the last farce from the French, 
they had the literature of the stage at the finger-ends of 
their straw-colored gloves. They had a pretty large ac- 
^ quaintance with actors and actresses, and were perfect 
Walpoluli in the minor scandals of the day. To do them 
justice, however, they were not indiflerent to the more 

I. — 21 Q 


242 


THE CAXTONS: 


masculine knowledge necessary in “this wrong world.” 
They talked as familiarly of the real actors of life as of 
the sham ones. They could adjust to a hair the rival 
pretensions of contending statesmen. They did not pro- 
fess to be deep in the mysteries of foreign cabinets (with 
the exception of one young gentleman connected with 
the Foreign Office, who prided himself on knowing ex- 
actly what the Russians meant to do with India — when 
they got it) ; but, to make amends, the majority of them 
had penetrated the closest secrets of our own. It is true 
that, according to a proper subdivision of labor, each 
took some particular member of the government for his 
special observation ; just as the most skilful surgeons, 
however profoundly versed in the general structure* of our 
^rame, rest their anatomical fame on the light thev throw 
on particular parts of it, — one man taking the brain, 
another the duodenum, a third the spinal cord, while a 
fourth, perhaps, is a master of all the symptoms indicated 
by a pensile finger. Accordingly, one of my friends ap- 
propriated to himself the Home Department; another 
the Colonies ; and a third, whom we all regarded as a 
future Talleyrand (or a De Retz at least), had devoted 
himself to the special study of Sir Robert Peel, and knew 
by the way in which that profound and inscrutable states- 
man threw open his coat, every thought that was passing 
in his breast 1 Whether lawyers or officials, they all had 
a great idea of themselves — high notions of what they 
were to he, rather than what they were to do, some day. 
As the king of modern fine gentlemen said of himself, in 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


243 


paraphrase of Yoltaire, “ they had letters in their pockets 
addressed to Posterity, — which the chances were, how- 
ever, that they might forget to deliver.” Somewhat 
« priggish ” most of them might be ; but, on the whole, 
they were far more interesting than mere idle men of 
pleasure. There was about them, as features of a general 
family likeness, a redundant activity of life — a gay ex- 
uberance of ambition — a light-hearted earnestness when 
at work — a schoolboy’s enjoyment of the hours of play. 

A great contrast to these young men was Sir Sedley 
Beaudesert, who was pointedly kind to me, and whose 
bachelor’s house was always open to me after noon ; Sir 
Sedley was visible to no one but his valet before that 
hour. A perfect bachelor’s house it was, too — with its 
windows opening on the Park, and sofas niched into the 
windows, on which you might loll at your ease, like the 
philosopher in Lucretius, — 

“ Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre, 

Errare,” — 

and see the gay crowds ride to and fro Rotten Row — 
without the fatigue of joining them, especially if the wind 
was in the east. 

There was no affectation of costliness about the rooms, 
but a wonderful accumulation of comfort. Every patent 
chair that proffered a variety in the art of lounging found 
its place there ; and near every chair a little table, on 
which you might deposit your book or your coffee-cup, 
without the trouble of moving more than your hand. In 
winter, nothing warmer than the quilted curtains and Ax- 


244 


THE CAXTONS: 


minster carpets can be conceived. In summer, nothing 
airier and cooler than the muslin draperies and the Indian 
mattings. And I defy a man to know to what perfection 
dinner may be brought, unless he had dined with Sir Sod- 
ley Beaudesert. Certainly, if that distinguished person- 
age had but been an egotist, he had been the happiest of 
men. But, unfortunately for him, he was singularly 
amiable and kind-hearted. He had the bonne digestion, 
but not the other requisite for worldly felicity — the maw- 
vais coeur. He felt a sincere pity for every One else who 
lived in rooms without patent chairs and little coffee- 
tables — whose windows did not look on the Park, with 
sofas niched into their recesses. As Henry lY. wished 
every man to have his pot au feu, so Sir Sedley Beaude- 
sert, if he could have had his way, would have every man 
served with an early cucumber for his fish, and a caraflfe 
of iced water by the side of his bread and cheese. He 
thus evinced on politics a naive simplicity, which delight- 
fully contrasted his acuteness on matters of taste. I re- 
member his saying, in a discussion on the Beer Bill, “ The 
poor ought not to be allowed to drink beer, it is so par- 
ticularly rheumatic I The best drink in hard work is dry 
champagne — (not mousseux) — I found that out when I 
used to shoot on the moors.” 

Indolent as Sir Sedley was, he had contrived to open 
an extraordinary number of drains on his wealth. 

First, as a landed proprietor, there was no end to ap- 
plications from distressed farmers, aged poor, benefit so- 
cieties, and poachers he had thrown out of employment 
by giving up his preserves to please his tenants. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


245 


Next, as a man of pleasure, the whole race of woman- 
kind had legitimate demands on him. From a distressed 
duchess, whose picture lay perdu under a secret spring 
of his snuff-box, to a decayed laundress, to whom he 
might have paid a compliment on the perfect involutions 
of a frill, it was quite sufficient to be a daughter of Eve 
to establish a just claim on Sir Sedley’s inheritance from 
Adam. 

Again, as an amateur of art, and a respectful servant 
of every muse, all whom the public had failed to patron- 
ise — painter, actor, poet, musician — turned, like dying 
sunflowers to the sun, towards the pitying smile of Sir 
Sedley Beaudesert. Add to these the general miscella- 
neous multitude, who “ had heard of Sir Sedley’s high 
character for benevolence,” and one may well suppose 
what a very costly reputation he had set up. In fact, 
though Sir Sedley could not spend on what might fairly 
be called “ himself ” a fifth part of his very handsome in 
come, I have no doubt that he found it difficult to make 
both ends meet at the close of the year. That he did so, 
he owed perhaps to two rules which his philosophy had 
peremptorily adopted. He never made debts, and he 
never gambled. For both these admirable aberrations 
from the ordinary routine of fine gentlemen, I believe he 
was indebted to the softness of his disposition. He had 
a great compassion for a wretch who was dunned. “ Poor 
fellow I ” he would say, “ it must be so painful to him to 
pass his life in saying No.” As Beau Brummell, when 
tisked if he was fond of vegetables, owned that he had 
22 * 


246 


THE CAXTONS: 


once eat a pea, so Sir Sedley Beaudesert owned that he 
had once played high at piquet. “ I was so unlucky as 
to win,’' said he, referring to that indiscretion, “ and I 
shall never forget the anguish on the face of the man wdio 
paid me. IJnless I could always lose, it would be a per- 
fect purgatory to play.” 

Now nothing could be more different in their kinds of 
benevolence than Sir Sedley and Mr. Trevanion. Mr. 
Trevaiiion had a great contempt for individual charity. 
He rarely put his hand into his purse — he drew a great 
cheque on his bankers. Was a congregation without a 
church, or a village without a school, or a river without 
a bridge, Mr. Trevanion set to work on calculations, 
found out the exact sum required by an algebraic x — y, 
and paid it as he would have paid his butcher. It must 
be owned that the distress of a man, whom he allowed to 
be deserving, did not appeal to him in vain. But it is 
astonishing how little he spent in that way ; for it was 
hard, indeed, to convince Mr. Trevanion that a deserving 
man ever was in such distress as to want charity. 

That Trevanion, nevertheless, did infinitely more real 
good than Sir Sedley, I believe ; but he did it as a men- 
tal operation — by no means as an impulse from the 
heart. I am sorry to say that the main difference was 
this, — distress always seemed to accumulate round Sir 
Sedley, and vanish from the presence of Trevanion. 
Where the last came, with his busy, active, searching 
mind, energy w^oke, improvement sprang up. Where the 
first came, with his warm kind heart, a kind of torpor 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


247 


spread under its rays ; people lay down and basked in the 
liberal sunshine. Nature in one broke forth like a brisk 
sturdy winter, in the other like a lazy Italian summer 
Winter is an excellent invigorator, no doubt, but we all 
love summer better. 

Now, it is a proof how lovable Sir Sedley was, that I 
loved him, and yet was jealous of him. Of all the satel- 
lites round my fair Cynthia, Fanny Trevanion, I dreaded 
most this amiable luminary. It was in vain for me to say 
with the insolence of youth that Sir Sedley Beaudesert 
was of the same age as Fanny’s father ; — to see them 
together, he might have passed for Trevanion’s son. No 
one amongst the younger generation was half so handsome 
as Sedley Beaudesert. He might be eclipsed at first 
sight by the showy effect of more redundant locks and 
more brilliant bloom. But he had but to speak, to smile, 
in order to throw a whole cohort of dandies into the 
shade. It was the expression of his countenance that was 
so bewitching ; there was something so kindly in its easy 
candor, its benign good-nature. And he understood 
women so well I He flattered their foibles so insensibly ; 
he commanded their affection with so gracious a dignity. 
Above all, what with his accomplishments, his peculiar 
reputation, his long celibacy, and the soft melancholy of 
his sentiments, he always contrived to interest them. 
There was not a charming woman by whom this charming 
man did not seem just on the point of being caught ! It 
was like the sight of a splendid trout in a transparent 
stream, sailing pensively to and fro your fly, in a will and- 


248 


THE CAXTONS: 


a-vvon’t sort of way. Such a trout I it would be a thou* 
sand pities to leave him, when evidently so well disposed I 
That trout, fair maid or gentle widow, would have kept 
you — whipping the stream and dragging the fly — from 
morning to dewy eve. Certainly I don’t wish worse to 
my bitterest foe of five-and-twenty than such a rival as 
Sedley Beaudesert at seven-and-forty. 

Fanny, indeed, perplexed me horribly. Sometimes I 
fancied she liked me ; but the fancy scarce thrilled me 
with delight before it vanished in the frost of a careless 
look, or the cold beam of a sarcastic laugh. Spoiled 
darling of the world as she was, she seemed so innocent 
in her exuberant happiness, that one forgot all her faults 
in that atmosphere of joy which she diffused around her. 
And, despite her pretty insolence, she had so kind a 
woman’s heart below the surface ! When she once saw 
that she had pained you, she was so soft, so winning, so 
humble, till she had healed the wound. But then, if she 
saw she had pleased you too much, the little witch was 
never easy till she had plagued you again. As heiress to 
so rich a father, or rather perhaps mother, (for the for- 
tune came from Lady Ellinor,) she was naturally sur 
rounded with admirers not wholly disinterested. She did 
right to plague them — but me I Poor boy that I was, 
why should I seem more disinterested than others I how 
should she perceive all that lay hid in my young deep 
heart ? Was I not in all worldly pretensions the least 
worthy of her admirers, and might I not seem, therefore, 
the most mercenary ? I who never thought of her for- 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


24 ^ 


tune, or if that thought did come across me, it was to 
make me start and turn pale I And then it vanished at 
her first glance, as a ghost from the dawn. How hard it 
is to convince youth, that sees all the world of the future 
before it, and covers that future with golden palaces, of 
the inequalities of life 1 In my fantastic and sublime ro- 
mance, I looked out into that Great Beyond, saw myself 
orator, statesman, minister, ambassador — Heaven knows 
what — laying laurels, which I mist(Tok for rent-rolls, at 
Fanny’s feet. 

Whatever Fanny might have discovered as to the state 
of my heart, it seemed an abyss not worth prying into by 
either Trevanion or Lady Ellinor. The first, indeed, as 
may be supposed, was too busy to think of such trifles. 
And Lady Ellinor treated me as a mere boy — almost 
like a boy of her own, she was so kind to me. But she 
did not notice much the things that lay immediately 
around her. In brilliant conversation with poets, wits, 
and statesmen — in sympathy with the toils of her hus- 
band — or proud schemes for his aggrandisement. Lady 
Ellinor lived a life of excitement. Those large eager 
shining eyes of hers, bright with some feverish discontent, 
looked far abroad as if for new worlds to conquer — the 
world at her feet escaped from her vision. She loved her 
daughter, she was proud of her, trusted in her with a 
superb repose — she did not watch over her. Lady Elli* 
nor stood alone on a mountain, and amidst a cloud. 


350 


THE CAXTONS: 


CHAPTER II. 

One day the Trevanions had all gone into the country, 
on a visit to a retired minister distantly related to Lady 
Ellinor, and who was one of the few persons Trevanion 
himself condescended to consult. I had almost a holi- 
day. I went to call on Sir Sedley Beaudesert. — I had 
always longed to sound him on one subject, and had 
never dared. This time I resolved to pluck up courage. 

“ Ah, my young friend I ” said he, rising from the con- 
templation of a villanous picture by a young artist, which 
he had just benevolently purchased, “ I was thinking of 
you this morning. — Wait a moment. Summers (this to 
the valet). Be so good as to take this picture, let it be 
packed up and go down into the country. It is a sort of 
picture,” he added, turning to me, “ that requires a large 
house. I have an old gallery with little casements that 
let in no light. It is astonishing how convenient I have 
found it ! ” As soon as the picture was gone. Sir Sedley 
drew a long breath, as if relieved ; and resumed more 
gaily — 

“Yes I was thinking of you ; and if you will forgive 
any interference in your affairs — from your father’s old 
friend — I should be greatly honored by your permission 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


251 


to ask Trevanion what he supposes is to be the ultimate 
benefit of the horrible labors he infiicts upon you.” 

“ But, my dear Sir Sedley, I like the labors j I am per- 
fectly contented.” 

** Not to remain always secretary to one who, if there 
were no business to be done among men, would set about 
teaching the ants to build hills upon better architectural 
principles I My dear sir, Trevanion is an awful man — 
one catches fatigue if one is in the same room with him 
three minutes I At your age, an age that ought to be 
so happy,” continued Sir Sedley, with a compassion per- 
fectly angelic, “it is sad to see so little enjoyment I” 

“ But, Sir Sedley, I assure you that you are mistaken, 
I thoroughly enjoy myself ; and have I not heard even 
you confess that one may be idle and not happy ? ” 

“ I did not confess that till I was on the wrong side of 
forty I ” said Sir Sedley with a slight shade on his brow. 

“ Nobody would ever think you were on the wrong side 
of forty I ” said I with artful fiattery, winding into my 
subject. “ Miss Trevanion for instance ? ” 

I paused. Sir Sedley looked hard at me, from his 
bright dark-blue eyes. “Well, Miss Trevanion' for in- 
stance ? ” 

“ Miss Trevanion, who has all the best-looking fellows 
in London round her, evidently prefers you to any of 
them. ” 

T said this with a great gulp. I was obstinately bent 
'jn plumbing the depth of my own fears. 

Sir Sedley rose ; iie laid his hand kindly on mine, and 


252 


THE CAXTONS: 


Baid, “ Do not let Fanny Trevanion torment you even 
more than her father does 1 ” 

“ I don’t understand you, Sir Sedley I ” 

“ But if I understand you, that is more to the purpose. 
A girl like Miss Trevanion is cruel till she discovers she 
has a heart. It is not safe to risk one’s own with an 
woman till she has ceased to be a coquette. My dea. 
young friend, if you took life less in earnest, I should 
spare you the pain of these hints. Some men sow flowers, 
some plant trees — you are planting a tree under which 
you will soon find that no flower will grow. Well and 
good, if the tree could last to bear fruit and give shade ; 
but beware lest you have to tear it up one day or other ; 
for then — what then ? why you will find your whole life 
plucked away with its roots I ” 

Sir Sedley said these last words with so serious an em- 
phasis, that I was startled from the confusion I had felt 
at the former part of his address. He paused long, 
tapped his snuff-box, inhaled a pinch slowly, and con- 
tinued, with his more accustomed sprightliness ; 

“Go as much as you can into the world — again I say 
‘ enjoy yourself.’ And again I ask, what is all this labor 
to do for you ? On some men, far less eminent than 
Trevanion, it would impose a duty to aid you in a practi- 
cal career, to secure you a public employment — not so 
on him. He would not mortgage an inch of his inde- 
pendence by asking a favor from a minister. He so 
thinks occupation the delight of life, that he occupies you 
out of pure affection. He does not trouble his head 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


25b 


about your future. He supposes your father will provide 
for that, and does not consider that meanwhile your work 
leads to nothing I Think over all this. I have now 
bored you enough.” 

I was bewildered — I was dumb : these practical men 
of the world, how they take us by surprise I Here had I 
come to sound Sir Sedley, and here was I plumbed, 
gauged, measured, turned inside out, without having got 
an inch beyond the surface of that smiling, dehonnaire, 
unruffled ease. Yet with his invariable delicacy, in spite 
of all this horrible frankness. Sir Sedley had not said a 
word to wound what he might think the more sensitive 
part of my amour propre — not a word as to the inade- 
piacy of my pretensions to think seriously of Fanny 
Trevanion. Had we been the Celadon and Chloe of a 
tountry village, he could not have regarded us as more 
equal, so far as the world went. And for the rest, he 
rather insinuated that poor Fanny, the great heiress, was 
not worthy of me, than that I was not worthy of Fanny. 

I felt that there was no wisdom in stammering and 
blushing out denials and equivocations ; so I stretched 
my hand to Sir Sedley, took up my hat, — and went. 
Instinctively I bent my way to my father’s house. I had 
not been there for many days. Not only had I had a 
great deal to do in the way of business, but I am ashamed 
to say that pleasure itself had so entangled my leisure 
hours, and Miss Trevanion especially so absorbed them, 
that, without even uneasy foreboding, I had left my father 
fluttering his wings more feebly and feebly in the web of 
I. —22 


254 


THE CAXTONS: 


Uncle Jack. When I arrived in Russell Street, I found 
the fly and the spider cheek-by-jowl together. Uncle 
Jack sprang up at my entrance, and cried, “ Congratulate 
your father. Congratulate him ! — no ; congratulate the 
world ! ” 

“ What, uncle I ’’ said I, with a dismal effort at sympa- 
-nising liveliness, *‘is the ^Literary Times^ launched at 
ast ? ” 

Oh, that is alL settled — settled long since. Here’s 
a specimen of the type we have chosen for the leaders.” 
And Uncle Jack, whose pocket was never without a wet 
sheet of some kind or other, drew forth a steaming pa- 
pyral monster, which in point of size was to the political 
“ Times” as a mammoth may be to an elephant. “ That 
is all settled. We are only preparing our contributors, 
and shall put out our programme next week or the week 
after. No, Pisistratus, I mean the Great Work.” 

“ My dear father, I am so glad. What I it is really 
sold, then ? ” 

“ Hum I ” said my father 

Sold I” burst forth Uncle Jack. “Sold — no, sir, 
we would not sell it I No : if all the booksellers fell down 
on their knees to us, as they will some day, that book 
should not be soldi Sir, that book is a revolution — it 
is an era — it is the emancipator of genius from mer- 
cenary thraldom ; — that book I ” 

I looked inqu’ringly from uncle to father, and mentally 
retracted my congratulations. Then Mr. Caxton, slightly 
blushing, and shyly rubbing his spectacles, said, “You 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


255 


see, Pisistratus, that though poor Jack has devoted un- 
commoh pains to induce the publishers to recognise the 
merit he has discovered in the ‘ History of Human Error/ 
he has failed to do so.” 

Not a bit of it ; they all acknowledge its miraculous 
learning — its ” 

“ Very true ; but they don’t think it will sell, and there- 
fore most selfishly refuse to buy it. One bookseller, in- 
deed, offered to treat for it if I would leave out all about 
the Hottentots and Caflfres, the Greek philosophers and 
Egyptian priests, and confining myself solely to polite 
society, entitle the work ‘ Anecdotes of the Courts of 
Europe, ancient and modern.’ ” 

“The wretch!” groaned Uncle Jack. 

“Another thought it might be cut up into little essays, 
leaving out the quotations, and entitled ‘ Men and Man- 
ners.’ A third was kind enough to observe, that though 
this particular work was quite unsaleable, yet, as I appeared 
to have some historical information, he should be happy 
to undertake an historical romance from ‘my graphic 
pen’ — that was the phrase, was it not. Jack?” 

Jack was too full to speak. 

— “ Provided I would introduce a proper love-plot, and 
make it into three volumes post octavo, twenty-three lines 
in a page, neither more nor less. One honest fellow at 
last was found, who seemed to me a very respectable and 
indeed enterprising person. And after going through a 
list of calculations, which showed that no possible profit 
could arise, he generously offered to give me half of those 


256 


THE CAXTONS: 


no-profits, provided I would guarantee half the very 
visible expenses. I was just meditating the prudence of 
accepting this proposal, when your uncle was seized with 
a sublime idea, which has whisked up my book in a whirl- 
wind of expectation.” 

‘‘And that idea ? ” said I, despondingly. 

“That idea,” quoth Uncle Jack, recovering himself, 
“is simply and shortly this. From time immemorial, 
authors have been the prey of the publishers. Sir, authors 
have lived in garrets, nay, have been choked in the street 
by an unexpected crumb of bread, like the man who wrote 
the play, poor fellow ! ” 

“ Otway,” said my father, “ The story is not true — 
no matter.” 

“ Milton, sir, as everybody knows, sold ‘ Paradise Lost’ 
for ten pounds — ten pounds, sir ! In short, instances 
of a like nature are too numerous to quote. But the 
booksellers, sir — they are leviath^s — they roll in seas 
of gold. They subsist upon authors as vampires upon 
little children. But at last endurance has reached its 
limit — the fiat has gone forth — the tocsin of liberty has 
resounded — authors have burst their fetters. And we 
nave just inaugurated the institution of ‘ The Grand 
ANTI-PUBLISHER CONFEDERATE AUTHORS’ SOCIETY,’ by 
which, Pisistratus — by which, mark you, every author 
is to be his own publisher; that is, every author who 
joins the Society. No more submission of immortal 
works to mercenary calculators, to sordid tastes — no 
more hard bargains and broken hearts 1 — no more crumbs 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


257 


of bread choking great tragic poets in the streets — no 
more Paradises Lost sold at £10 apiece ! The author 
brings his book to a select committee appointed for the 
purpose; men of delicacy, education, and refinement — 
authors themselves ; they read it, the Society publish ; 
and after a modest deduction, which goes toward the 
funds of the Society, the Treasurer hands over the profits 
to the author.” 

“ So that in fact. Uncle, every author who can’t find a 
publisher anywhere else, will of course come to the Society. 
The fraternity will be numerous.” 

“It will indeed.” 

“And the speculation — ruinous.” 

“ Ruinous, why ? ” 

“ Because, in all mercantile negotiations, it is ruinous 
to invest capital in supplies which fail of demand. You 
undertake to publish books that booksellers will not 
publish — why ? because booksellers can’t sell them 1 It 
is just probable that you’ll not sell them any better than 
the booksellers. Ergo, the more your business, the larger 
your deficit ; and the more numerous your society, the 
more disastrous your condition, q.e.d.” 

“ Pooh ! The select committee will decide what books 
are to be published.” 

“ Then, where the deuce is the advantage to the 
authors I I would as lief submit my work to a publisher 
os I would to a select committee of authors. At ail 
events, the publisher is not my rival ; and I suspect he is 
22* R 


258 


THE CAXTONS: 


the best judge, after all, of a book — as an accoucheur 
ought to be of a baby.’^ 

“ Upon my word, nephew, you pay a bad compliment 
to your father’s Great Work, which the booksellers will 
have nothing to do with.” 

That was artfully said, and I was posed t when Mr. 
Caxton observed, with an apologetic smile : 

“ The fact is, my dear Pisistratus, that I want my book 
published without diminishing the little fortune I keep 
for you some day. Uncle Jack starts a society so to 
publish it. — Health and long life to Uncle Jack’s society. 
One can’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” 

Here my mother entered, rosy from a shopping expe- 
dition with Mrs. Primmins ; and in her joy at hearing 
that I could stay dinner, all else was forgotten. By a 
wonder, which I did not regret. Uncle Jack really was 
engaged to dine out. He had other irons in the fire 
besides the “Literary Times” and the “Confederate 
Authors’ Society : ” he was deep in a scheme for making 
house-tops of felt, (which, under other hands, has, I be- 
lieve, since succeeded ;) and he had found a rich man (1 
suppose a hatter) who seemed well inclined to the pro- 
ject, and had actually asked him to dine and expound 
his views. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


259 


CHAPTER III. 

Here we three are seated round the open window — 
after dinner — familiar as in the old happy time — and 
my mother is talking low, that she may not disturb my 
father, who seems in thought. 

Cr-cr-crrr-cr-cr ! I feel it — I have it. — Where I What I 
Where I Knock it down — brush it off 1 For Heaven’s 
sake, see to it I — Crrrr-crrrrr — there — here — in my hair 
— in my sleeve — in my ear. — Cr-cr. 

I say solemnly — and on the word of a Christian, that, 
as I sat down to begin this chapter, being somewhat in 
a brown study, the pen insensibly slipt from my hand, 
and, leaning back in my chair, I fell to gazing into the 
fire. It is the end of June, and a remarkably cold even- 
ing — even for that time of year. And while I was so 
gazing, I felt something crawling just by the nape of the 
neck, ma’am. Instinctively and mechanically, and still 
musing, I put my hand there, and drew forth — What ? 
That what it is which perplexes me. It was a thing — a 
dark thing — a much bigger thing than I had expected. 
And the sight took me so by surprise, that I gave my 
hand a violent shake, and the thing went — where I know 
not. The what and the where are the knotty points in 
the whole question I No sooner had it gone, than I was 


260 


THE C AXTONS : 


seized with repentance not to have examined it more 
closely — not to have ascertained what the creature was. 
It might have been an earwig — a very large motherly 
earwig — an earwig far gone in that way in which ear- 
wigs wish to be who love their lords. I have a profound 
horror of earwigs — I firmly believe that they do get 
into the ear. That is a subject on which it is useless to 
argue with me upon philosophical grounds. I have a 
vivid recollection of a story told me by Mrs. Primmins — 
How a lady for many years suffered under the most ex- 
cruciating headaches ; how, as the tombstones say, “phy- 
sicians were in vain ; ” how she died ; and how her head 
was opened, and how such a nest of earwigs — ma’am — 
such a nest 1 — Earwigs are the prolifickest things, and 
so fond of their offspring I They sit on their eggs like 
hens — and the young, as soon as they are born, creep 
under them for protection — quite touchingly I Imagine 
such an establishment domesticated at one’s tympanum ! 

But the creature was certainly larger than an earwig. 
It might have been one of that genus in the family of 
Forficulidce, called Lahidoura — monsters whose antennae 
have thirty joints 1 There is a species of this creature 
in England, but to the great grief of naturalists, and to 
the great honor of Providence, very rarely found, in- 
finitely larger than the common earwig, or Foi'Jiculida 
auriculana. Could it have been an early hornet ? It 
bad certainly a black head, and great feelers. I have a 
greater horror of hornets, if possible, than I have of ear- 
wigs. Two hornets will kill a man, and three a carriage- 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


261 


horse sixteen hands high. However, the creature was 
gone. — Yes, but where ? Where had I so rashly thrown 
it ? It might have got into a fold of my dressing-gown 
or into my slippers — or, in short, anywhere, in the various 
recesses for earwigs and hornets which a gentleman’s 
habiliments afford. I satisfy myself at last, as far as I 
can, seeing that I am not alone in the room — that it is 
not upon me. I look upon the carpet — the rug — the 
chair — under the fender. It is non inventus. I barba- 
rously hope it is frizzing behind that great black coal in 
the grate. I pluck up courage — I prudently remove to 
the other end of the room. I take up my pen — I begin 
my chapter — very nicely, too, I think upon the whole. 
I am just getting into my subject, when — cr-cr-cr-cr-cr 
— crawl — crawl — crawl — creep — creep — creep. Ex- 
actly, my dear ma’am, in the same place it was before 1 
Oh, by the Powers ! I forgot all my scientific regrets at 
not having scrutinised its genus before, whether Forficu- 
lida or Lahidoura. I made a desperate lunge with, both 
hands — something between thrust and cut, ma’am. The 
beast is gone. Yes, but again where ? I say that that 
where is a very horrible question. Having come twice, 
in spite of all my precautions — and exactly on the same 
spot, too — it shows a confirmed disposition to habituate 
itself to its quarters — to effect a parochial settlement 
upon me ; there is something awful and preternatural in 
it. I assure you that there is not a part of me that has 
not gone cr-cr-cr ! — that has not crept — crawled and 
forficulated ever since ; and I put it to you what soil of 
19 * 


262 


THE C AXT ONS ; 


a chapter I can make after such a My good little 

girl, will you just take the candle, and look carefully 
under the table? — that’s a dear! Yes, my love, very 
black indeed, with two horns, and inclined to be corpu- 
lent. Gentlemen and ladies who have cultivated an ac- 
quaintance with the Phoenician language, are aware that 
Belzebub, examined etymologically and entomologically, 
is nothing more nor less than Baalzebub — “the Jupiter- 
fly ” — an emblem of the Destroying Attribute, which 
attribute, indeed, is found in all the insect tribes more or 
less. Wherefore, as Mr. Payne Knight, in his Inquiry 
into Symbolical Languages, hath observed, the Egyptian 
priests shaved their whole bodies, even to their eyebrows, 
lest unaware they should harbor any of the minor Zebubs 
of the great Baal. If I were the least bit more per- 
suaded that that black cr-cr were about me still, and that 
th-^ sacrifice of my eyebrows would deprive him of shelter, 
by the souls of the Ptolemies ! I w^ould — and I will, 
too. Ring the bell, my little dear ! J ohn, my — my 
cigar-box ! There is not a cr in the world that can abide 
the fumes of the Havannah I Pshaw 1 sir, I am not the 
only man who lets his first thoughts upon cold steel end, 
like this chapter, in — Pfif — pff — pff — ! 


P 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


263 


CHAPTER IV. 

Everything in this world is of use, even a black thing 
crawling over the nape of one’s neck I Grim unknown I 
I shall make of thee — a simile I 

I think, ma’am, you will allow that if an incident such 
as I have described had befallen yourself, and you had a 
proper and lady-like horror of earwigs, (however motherly 
and fond of their offspring,) and also of early hornets — 
and indeed of all unknown things of the insect tribe with 
black heads and two great horns, or feelers, or forceps, 
just by your ear — I think, ma’am, you will allow that 
you would find it difficult to settle back to your former 
placidity of mood and innocent stitch-work. You would 
feel a something that grated on your nerves — and cr’d- 
cr’d “ all over you like,” as the children say. And the 
worst is, that you would be ashamed to say it. You 
would feel obliged to look pleased and join in the conver- 
eation, and not fidget too much, nor always be shaking 
your flounces, and looking into a dark corner of your 
apron. Thus it is with many other things in life besides 
black insects. One has a secret care — an abstraction — 
a something between the memory and the feeling, of a 
dark crawling cr, which one has never dared to analyse. 
So I sat by my mother, trying to smile and talk as in the 


264 


THE CAXTONS : 


old time — but longing to move about and look around, 
and escape to my own solitude, and take the clothes off 
my mind, and see what it was that had so troubled and 
terrified me — for trouble and terror were upon me. And 
my mother, who was always (heaven bless her !) inquisi- 
tive enough in all that concerned her darling Anachronism, 
was especially inquisitive that evening. She made me 
say where I had been, and what I had done, and how 1 
had spent my time — and Fanny Trevanion, (whom she 
had seen, by the way, three or four times, and whom she 
thought the prettiest person in the world) — oh, she must 
know exactly what I thought of Fanny Trevanion ! 

And all this while my father seemed in thought ; and 
so, with my arm over my mother’s chair, and my hand in 
hers, I answered my mother’s questions — sometimes by 
a stammer, sometimes by a violent effort at volubility ; 
when at some interrogatory that w'ent tingling right to 
my heart, I turned uneasily, and there were my father’s 
eyes fixed on mine — fixed as they had been — when, and 
none knew why, I pined and languished, and my father 
said “he must go to school.” Fixed, with quiet watch- 
ful tenderness. Ah no ! — his thoughts had not been on 
the Great Work — he had been deep in the pages of that 
less worthy one for which he had yet more than an author’s 
paternal care. I met those eyes, and yearned to throw 
myself on his heart — and tell him all. Tell him what? 
Ma’am, I no more knew what to tell him than I know 
what that black thing was w^hich has so worried me ail 
this blessed evening ! 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


265 


“ Pisistratus,” said my father softly, “I fear you have 
forgotten the saffron bag.” 

*‘No, indeed, sir,” said I, smiling. 

“ He,” resumed my father, — “ he who wears the saffron 
bag has more cheerful, settled spirit^, than you seem to 
have, my poor boy.” 

My dear Austin, his spirits are very good. I think,” 
said my mother anxiously. 

My father shook his head — then he took two cr three 
turns about the room. 

“ Shall I ring for candles, sir ? It is getting dark ; 
you will wish to read ? ” 

“ No, Pisistratus, it is you who shall read ; and this 
hour of twilight best suits the book I am about to open 
to you.” 

So saying, he drew a chair between me and my mother, 
and seated himself gravely, looking down a long time i» 
silence — then turning his eyes to each of us alternately. 

“ My dear wife,” said he, at length, almost solemnly, 

I am going to speak of myself as I was before I knew 
you.” 

Even in the twilight I saw that my mother’s counte- 
nance changed. 

“You have respected my secrets, Katherine, tenderly 
— h onestly. Now the time is come when I can tell them 
to you and to our son.” 


I. — 23 


266 


THE CAXTONS: 


CHAPTER V. 

MY father’s first LOVE. 

“ I LOST my mother early ; my father (a good man, but 
who was so indolent that he rarely stirred from his chair, 
and wlio often passed whole days without speaking, like 
an Indian dervish) left Roland and myself to educate 
ourselves much according to our own tastes. Roland 
shot, and hunted, and fished, — read all the poetry and 
books of chivalry to be found in my father’s collection, 
which was rich in such matters, and made a great many 
copies of the old pedigree ; — the only thing in which my 
father ever evinced much vital interest. Early in life I 
conceived a passion for graver studies,, and by good luck 
I found a tutor in Mr. Tibbets, who, but for his modesty, 
Kitty, would have rivalled Person. He was a second 
Budseus for industry, and by the way, he said exactly the 
same thing that Budseus did, viz., ‘that the only lost day 
in his life was that in which he was married ; for on that 
day he had only had six hours for reading I ’ Under sucli 
a master I could not fail to be a scholar. I came from 
the university with such distinction as led me to look san- 
guinely on my career in the world. 

“ I returned to my father’s quiet rectory to pause and 
consider what path I should take to fame. The rectorv 


A FAMILY PICTyRE. 


267 


was just at the foot of the hill, on the brow of which were 
the ruins of the castle Roland has since purchased. And 
though I did not feel for the ruins the same romantic 
veneration as my dear brother (for my day-dreams were 
more colored by classic than feudal recollections), I yet 
loved to climb the hill, book in hand, and built my castles 
in the air amidst the wrecks of that which time had shat- 
tered on the earth. 

“ One day, entering the old weed-grown court, I saw a 
lady seated on my favorite spot, sketching the ruins. 
The lady was young — more beautiful than any woman I 
had yet seen, at least to my eyes. In a word, I was 
fascinated, and, as the trite phrase goes, ‘spell-bound.’ 
I seated myself at a little distance, and contemplated her 
without desiring to speak. By-and-by, from another part 
of the ruins, which were then uninhabited, came a tall, 
imposing, elderly gentleman, with a benignant aspect; 
and a little dog. The dog ran up to me barking. This 
drew the attention of both lady and gentleman to me. 
The gentleman approached, called off the dog, and apolo- 
gised with much politeness. Surveying me somewhat 
curiously, he then began to ask questions about the old 
place and the family it had belonged to, with the name 
and antecedents of which he was well acquainted. By 
degrees it came out that I was the descendant of that 
family, and the younger son of the humble rector who was 
now its representative. The gentleman then introduced 
himself to me as the Earl of Rainsforth, the principal 
proprietor in the neighborhood, but who had so rarely 


26 a 


THE CAXTONS: 


visited the country during my childhood and earlier youth 
that I had never before seen him. His only son, how- 
ever, a young man of great promise, had been at the same 
college with me in my first year at the university. The 
young lord was a reading man and a scholar ; and we had 
become slightly acquainted when he left for his travels. 

“ Now, on hearing my name. Lord Rainsforth took my 
hand cordially, and, leading me to his daughter, said, 

‘ Think, Ellinor, how fortunate I — this is the Mr. Caxton 
whom your brother so often spoke of.’ 

“ In short, my dear Pisistratus, the ice was broken, the 
acquaintance made, and Lord Rainsforth, saying he was 
come to atone for his long absence from the country, and 
to reside at Compton the greater part of the year, pressed 
me to visit him. I did so. Lord Rainsforth’s liking to 
me increased: I went there often.” 

My father paused, and seeing my mother had fixed her 
eyes upon him with a sort of mournful earnestness, and 
had pressed her hands very tightly together, he bent 
down and kissed her forehead. 

“ There is no cause, my child I ” said he. It was the 
only time I ever heard him address my mother so 
parentally. But then I never heard him before so grave 
and solemn — not a quotation, top — it. was incredible: 
it was not my father speaking, it was another man. 
“ Yes, I went there often. Lord Rainsforth was a re- 
markable person. Shyness, that was wholly without 
pride, (which is rare,) and a love for quiet literary 
pursuits, had prevented his taking that personal par+ in 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 2^0 

public life for which he was richly qualified ; but his 
reputation for sense and honor, and his personal popularity, 
had given him no inconsiderable influence even, I believe, 
in the formation of cabinets, and he had once been pre- 
vailed upon to fill a high diplomatic situation abroad, in 
which I have no doubt that he was as miserable as a good 
man can be under any infliction. He was now pleased to 
retire from the world, and look at it through the loop- 
holes of retreat. Lord Rainsforth had a great respect 
for talent, and a warm interest in such of the young as 
seemed to him to possess it. By talent, indeed, his 
family had risen, and were strikingly characterised. His 
ancestor, the first peer, had been a distinguished lawyer ; 
his father had been celebrated for scientific attainments ; 
his children, Ellinor and Lord Pendarvis, were highly 
accomplished. Thus the family identified themselves 
with the aristocracy of intellect, and seemed unconscious 
of their claims to the lower aristocracy of rank. You 
must bear this in mind throughout my story. 

“ Lady Ellinor shared her father’s tastes and habits of 
thought — (she was not then an heiress). Lord Rains- 
forth talked to me of my career. It was a time when 
the French Revolution had made statesmen look round 
with some anxiety to strengthen the existing order of 
things, by alliance with all in the rising generation who 
evinced such ability as might influence their contem- 
poraries. 

“ University distinction is, or was formerly, among the 
popular passports to public life. By degrees. Lord 
23 


270 


THE CAXTONS : 


Uainsforth liked me so well as to suggest to me a seat in 
tho House of Commons. A member of Parliament might 
rise to anything, and Lord K-ainsforth had sufficient in- 
fluence to effect my return. Dazzling prospect this to a 
young scholar fresh from Thucydides, and with Demos- 
thenes fresh at his tongue’s end. My dear boy, I was 
not then, you see, quite what I am now ; in a word, I 
loved Ellinor Compton, and therefore I was ambitious. 
You know how ambitious she is still. But I could not 
mould my ambition to hers. I could not contemplate 
entering the senate of my country as a dependent on a 
party or a patron — as a man who must make his fortune 
there — as a man who, in every vote, must consider how 
much nearer he advanced himself to emolument. I was 
not even certain that Lord Rainsforth’s views on politics 
were the same as mine would be. How could the politics 
of an experienced man of the world be those of an ardent 
young student ? But had they been identical, I felt that 
I could not so creep into equality with a patron’s 
daughter. No I I was ready to abandon my own more 
scholastic predilections — to strain every energy at the 
bar — to carve or force my own way to fortune — and if 
I arrived at independence, then — what then ? why, the 
right to speak of love, and aim at power. This was not 
the view of Ellinor Compton. The law seemed to her a 
tedious, needless drudgery : there was nothing in it to 
captivate her imagination. She listened to me with that 
charm which she yet retains, and by which she seems to 
identify herself with those who speak to her. She would 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 271 

turn to me with a pleading look when her father dilated 
on the brilliant prospects of a parliamentary success : for 
he (not having gained it, yet having lived with those who 
had) overvalued it, and seemed ever to wish to enjoy it 
through some other. But when I, in turn, spoke of in- 
dependence, of the bar, Ellinor’s face grew overcast. 
The world — the world was with her, and the ambition 
of the world, which is always for power or effect I A 
part of the house lay exposed to the east wind. ‘ Plant 
half-way down the hill,’ said I one day. ‘ Plant I ’ cried 
Lady Ellinor — ‘it will be twenty years before the trees 
grow up. Ko, my dear father, build a wall, and cover it 
with creepers 1 ’ ' That was an illustration of her whole 
character. She could not wait till trees had time to 
grow; a dead wall would be so much more quickly 
thrown up, and parasite creepers would give it a prettier 
effect. Nevertheless, she was a grand and noble creature. 
And I — in love I Not so discouraged as you may 
suppose ; for Lord Rainsforth often hinted encourage- 
ment, which even I could scarcely misconstrue^ Not 
caring for rank, and not wishing for fortune beyond com- 
petence for his daughter, he saw in me all he required — 
a gentleman of ancient birth, and one in whom his own 
active mind could prosecute that kind of mental ambition 
which overflowed in him, and yet had never had its vent. 
And Ellinor 1 — Heaven forbid I should say she loved 
me, — but something made me think she could do so. 
Under these notions, suppressing all my hopes, I made a 
bold effort to master the influences round me. and to 


272 


THE OAXTONS: 


adopt that career I thought worthiest of us all. I went 
to Loudon to read for the bar.’^ 

“ The bar I is it possible ? ” cried I. My father smiled 
sadly. 

“Everything seemed possible to me then. I read 
some months. I began to see my way even in that short 
time ; began to comprehend what would be the difficulties 
before me, and to feel there was that within me that 
could master them. I took a holiday and returned to 
Cumberland. I found Roland there on my return. 
Always of a roving, adventurous temper, though he had 
not then entered the army, he had, for more than two 
years, been wandering over Great Britain and Ireland on 
foot. It was a young knight-errant whom I embraced, 
and who overwhelmed me with reproaches that I should 
be reading for the law. There had never been a lawyer 
in the family I It was about that time, I think, that I 
petrified him with the discovery of the printer I I knew 
not exactly wherefore, whether from jealousy, fear, fore- 
boding — but it certainly teas a pain that seized me — 
when I learned from Roland that he had become intimate 
at Compton Hall. Roland and Lord Rainsforth had 
met at the house of a neighboring gentleman, and Lord 
Rainsforth had welcomed his acquaintance, at first, 
perhaps, for my sake, afterwards for his own. 

“ I could not for the life of me,” continued my father, 
“ ask Roland if he admired Ellinor ; but when I found 
that he did not put that question to me, I trembled I ” 

“We went to Compton together, speakijig little by the 
way. We stayed there some days.” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


273 


My father heri thrust his hand into his waistcoat — all 
men have their little ways, which, denote much ; and when 
my father thrust his hand into his waistcoat^ it was always 
a sign of some mental effort — he was going to prove, or 
to argue, to moralise, or to preach. Therefore, though 
I was listening before with all my ears, I believe I had, 
speaking magnetically and mesmerically, an extra pair of 
ears, a new sense supplied to me, when my father put his 
hand into his waistcoat. 


CHAPTER VI. 

WHEREIN MY FATHER CONTINUES HIS STORY. 

“ There is not a mystical creation, type, symbol, or 
poetical invention for meanings abstruse, recondite, and 
incomprehensible, which is not represented by the female 
gender,” said my father, having his hand quite buried in 
his waistcoat. “ For instance, the Sphynx and Isis, 
whose veil no man had ever.lifted, were both ladies, Kitty I 
And so was Persephone, who must be always either in 
heaven or hell — and Hecate, who was one thing by night 
and another by day. The Sibyls were females ; and so 
were the Gorgons, the Harpies, the Furies, the Fates, 
and the Teutonic Valkyrs, Nornies, and Hela herself : in 
short, all representations of ideas, obscure, inscrutable, 
and portentous, are nouns feminine.” 

Heaven bless my father 1 Augustine Caxton was 


S 


274 


THE CAXTONS: 


himself again 1 I began to fear that the story had slipped 
away from him, lost in that labyrinth of learning. But^ 
lucidly, as he* paused for breath, his look fell on those 
limpid blue eyes of my mother’s, and that honest open 
brow of hers, which had certainly nothing in common with 
Sphinxes, Fates, Furies, or Valkyrs; and, whether his 
heart smote him, or his reason made him own that he had 
fallen into a very disingenuous and unsound train of as- 
sertion, I know not, but his front relaxed, and with a 
smile he resumed — “ Ellinor was the last person in the 
world to deceive any one willingly. Did she deceive me 
and Roland, that we both, though not conceited men, 
fancied that, if we had dared to speak openly of love, we 
had not so dared in vain ? or do you think, Kitty, that a 
woman really can love (not much, perhaps, but somewhat) 
two or three, or half a dozen at a time ? ” 

“ Impossible I ” cried my mother. “ And as for this 
Lady Ellinor, I am shocked at her — I don’t know what 
to call it I ” 

“ Nor I either, my dear,” said my father, slowly taking 
his hand from his waistcoat, as if the effort were too much 
for him, and the problem were insoluble. “But this, 
begging your pardon, I do think, that before a young 
voman does really, truly, and cordially centre her affec- 
.ions on one object, she suffers fancy, imagination, the 
desire of power, curiosity, or heaven knows what, to 
simulate even to her own mind, pale reflections of the lu 
minary not yet risen — parhelia that precede the sun 
Don’t judge of Roland as you see him now, Pisistratus-^ 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


275 


grim, and grey, and formal; imagine a nature soaring 
high amongst daring thoughts, . or exuberant with th<» 
nameless poetry of youthful life — with a frame matchless 
for bounding elasticity — an eye bright with haughty fire 
— a heart from which noble sentiments sprang like sparks 
from an anvil. Lady Ellinor had an ardent, inquisitive 
imagination. This bold fiery nature must have moved 
her interest. On the other hand, she had an instructed, 
full, and eager mind. Am T vain if I say, now after the 
lapse of so many years, that in my mind her intellect felt 
companionship ? When a woman loves, and marries, and 
settles, why then she becomes — a one whole, a completed 
being. But a girl like Ellinor has in her many women. 
Yarious herself, all varieties please her. I do believe that, 
if either of us. had spoken the word boldly. Lady Ellinor 
would have shrunk back to her own heart — examined it, 
tasked it, and given a frank and generous answer. And 
he who had spoken first might have had the better chance 
not to receive a ‘No.’ But neither of us spoke. And 
perhaps she was rather curious to know if she had made 
an impression, than anxious to create it. It was not that 
she willingly deceived us, but her whole atmosphere was 
delusion. Mists come before the sunrise. However this 
be, Roland and I were not long in detecting each other. 
And hence arose, first coldness, then jealousy, then 
quarrel.” 

“ Oh, my father, your love must have been indeed 
powerful, to have made a breach between the hearts of 
two such brothers I ” 


276 


THE CAXTONS : 


“ Yes,” said my father, “it was amidst the old ruins of 
the castle, there, where I had first seen Ellinor — that, 
winding my arm round Roland’s neck, as I found him 
seated amongst the weeds and stones, his face buried in 
his hands — it was there that I said — ‘ Brother, we both 
love this woman I My nature is the calmer of the two, I 
shall feel the loss less. Brother, shake hands, and God 
speed you, for I go 1 ” 

“ Austin I ” murmured my Another, sinking her head on 
my father’s breast. 

“And therewith we quarrelled. For it was Roland 
who insisted, while the tears rolled down his eyes, and he 
stamped his foot on the ground, that he was the intruder, 
the interloper — that he had no hope — that he had been 
a fool and a madman — and that it was for him to go I 
Now, while we were disputing, and words began to run 
high, my father’s old servant entered the desolate place, 
with a note from Lady Ellinor to me, asking for the loan 
of some book I had praised. Roland saw the hand- 
writing, and while I turned the note over and over irreso- 
lutely, before I broke the seal, he vanished. 

“ He did not return to my father’s house. We did not 
know what had become of him. But I, thinking over 
that impulsive volcanic nature, took quick alarm. And I 
went in search of him ; came on his track at last ; and, 
after many days, found him in a miserable cottage 
amongst the most dreary of the dreary wastes which form 
so large a part of Cumberland. He was so altered I 
scarcely knew him. To be brief, we came at last to a 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


271 


ompromise. We would go back to Compton. This 
suspense was intolerable. One of us at least should take 
courage and learn his fate. But .who should speak first ? 
We drew lots, and the lot fell on me. 

“ And now that I was really to pass the Rubicon, now 
that I was to impart that secret hope which had animated 
me so long — been to me a new life — what were my sen- 
sations ? My dear boy, depend on it that that age is the 
happiest, when such feelings as I felt then can agitate us 
no more : they are mistaken in the serene order of that 
majestic life which heaven meant for thoughtful man. 
Our souls should be as stars on earth, not as meteors and 
tortured comets. What could I offer to Ellinor — to her 
father ? What but a future of patient labor ? And in 
either answer, what alternative of misery I — my own ex- 
istence shattered, or Roland’s noble heart I 

“Well, we went to Compton. In our former visits wc 
had been almost the only guests. Lord Rainsforth did 
not much affect the intercour^ of country squires, less 
educated then than now ; and in excuse for Ellinor and 
for us, we were almost the only men of our own age she 
had seen in that large dull house. But now the London 
season had broken up, the house was filled ; there was no 
longer that familiar and constant approach to the mistress 
of the Hall, which had made us like one family. Great 
ladies, fine people were around her ; a look, a smile, a 
passing word, were as much as I had a right to expect. 
And the talk, too, how different ! Before, I could speak 
on books. — T was at home there I Roland could pour 
I. — 24 


378 


THE CAXTONS: 


forth his dreams, his chivalrous love for the past, his bold 
defiance of the unknown future. And Ellinor, cultivated 
and fanciful, could sympathise with both. And her 
father, scholar and gentleman, could sympathise too 
But now ” 


CHAPTER YII. 

WHEREIN MY FATHER BRINGS OUT HIS DENOUEMENT. 

“It is no use in the world,” said my father, “to know 
all the languages expounded in grammars and splintered 
up into lexicons, if we don’t learn the language of the 
world. It is a talk apart, Kitty,” cried my father, warm- 
ing up. “ It is an Anaglyph — a spoken anaglyph, my 
dear I If all the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians had been 
A B C to you, still if you did not know the anaglyph, 
you would know nothing of the true mysteries of tae 
priests.* 

“ Neither Roland nor I knew one symbol letter of the 
anaglyph. Talk, talk — talk on persons we never heard 
of, things we never cared for. All we thought of im- 
portance, puerile or pedantic trifles — all we thought so 
trite and childish, the grand momentous business of life I 
If you found a little schoolboy, on his half-holiday, fishing 

* The anaglyph was peculiar to the Egyptian priests-- the 
hieroglyph generally known to the well-educated. 


• A FAMILY PICTURE. 279 

for minnows with a crooked pin, and you began to tell 
him of all the wonders of the deep, the laws of the tides, 
and the antediluvian relics of iguanodon and ichthyosau 
rus — nay, if you spoke but of pearl-fisheries, and coral 
banks, or water-kelpies and naiads, would not the little 
boy cry out peevishly, “Don’t tease me with all that 
nonsense 1 let me fish in peace for my minnows. ’ I think 
the little boy is right after his own way — it was to fish 
for minnows that he came out, poor child, not to hear 
about iguanodons and water-kelpies I 

“ So the company fished for minnows, and not a word 
could we say about our pearl-fisheries and coral banks I 
And as for fishing for minnows ourselves, my dear boy, 
we should have been less bewildered if you had asked us 
to fish for a mermaid ! Do you see, now, one reason why 
I have let you go thus early into the world ? Well, but 
amongst those minnow-fishers there was one who fished 
with an air that made the minnows look larger than sal- 
mons. 

“Trevanion had been at Cambridge with me. We 
were even intimate. He was a young man like myself, 
with his way to make in the world. Poor as I — of a 
family upon a par with mine — old enough, but decayed. 
Q’here was, however, this dilference between us: he had 
connexions in the great world — I had none. Like me, 
liis chief pecuniary resource was a college fellowship. 
Now, Trevamon had established a high reputation at the 
Ciiiversity t but less as a scholar, though a pretty fair 
one, than as a man to rise in life. Every faculty he had 


280 


THE CAXTONS: 


was an energy. He aimed at everything — lost some 
things — gained others. He was a great speaker in a 
debating society, a member of some politico-economical 
club. He was an eternal talker — brilliant, various, 
paradoxical, florid — different from what he is now. 
For, dreading fancy, his career since has been one effort 
to curb it. But all his mind attached itself to something 
that we Englishmen call solid : it was a large mind — 
not, my dear Kitty, like a fine whale sailing through 
knowledge from the pleasure of sailing — but like a 
polypus, that puts forth all its feelers for the purpose of 
catching hold of something. Trevanion had gone at once 
to London from the University : his reputation and his 
talk dazzled his connexions, not unjustly. They made an 
effort — they got him into Parliament : he had spoken, he 
had succeeded. He came to Compton in the flush of his 
virgin fame. I cannot convey to you who know him 
now — with his care-worn face, and abrupt dry mannei, 
reduced by perpetual gladiatorship to the skin and bone 
of his former self — what that man was when he first 
stepped into the arena of life. 

“ You see, my listeners, that you have to recollect that 
we middle-aged folks were young then ; that is to say, 
we were as different from what we are now, as the green 
bough of summer is from the dry wood, out of which we 
make a ship or a gate-post. Neither man nor wood 
comes to the uses of life till the green leaves are stripped 
and the sap gone. And then the uses of life transform 
us into strange things with other names : the tree is a 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


281 


tree no more — it is a gate or a ship ; the youth is a youth 
no more, but a one-legged soldier ; a hollow-eyed states* 
man ; a scholar spectacled and slippered 1 AVhen Micyllus 
— (here the hand slides into the waistcoat again !) — 
when Micyllus,” said my father, “ asked the cock that 
had once been Pythagoras,* if the affair of Troy was 
really as Homer told it, the cock replied scornfully, ‘ How 
could Homer know anything about it ? — at that time he 
was a camel in Bactria.’ Pisistratus, according to tKe 
doctrine of metempsychosis, you might have been a Bac- 
trian camel, when that which to my life was the siege of 
Troy saw Roland and Trevanion before the walls. 

“ Handsome you can see that Trevanion has been ; but 
the beauty of his countenance then was in its perpetual 
play, its intellectual eagerness ; and his conversation was 
so discursive, so various, so animated, and above all, so 
full of the things of the day 1 If he had been a priest 
of Serapis for fifty years, he could not have known the 
anaglyph better. Therefore he filled up every crevice 
and pore of that hollow society with his broken, inquisi- 
tive, petulant light. Therefore he was admired, talked 
of, listened to ; and everybody said, ‘ Trevanion is a 
rising man.’ 

“Yet I did not do him then the justice I have done 
since ; for we students and abstract thinkers are apt too 
much, in our first youth, to look to the depth of a man’s 
mind or knowledge, and not enough to the surface it 


* Lucian, The Dream of Micyllus. 


24 * 


282 


THE CAXTONS: 


may cover. There may be more water in a flowing 
stream, only four feet deep, and certainly more fcrce and 
more health, than in a sullen pool thirty yards to the 
bottom. I did not do Trevanion justice. I did not see 
how naturally he realized Lady Ellinor’s ideal. I have 
said that she was like many women in one. Trevanion 
was a thousand men in one. He had learning to please 
her mind, eloquence to dazzle her fancy, beauty to please 
her eye, reputation precisely of the kind to allure her 
vanity, honor and conscientious purpose to satisfy her 
judgment ; and, above all, he was ambitious ; ambitious, 
not as I — not as Roland was, but ambitious as Ellinor 
was : ambitious, not to realize some grand ideal in the 
silent heart, but to grasp the practical positive substances 
that lay without. 

“Ellinor was a child of the great world, and so 
was he. 

“ I saw not all this, nor did Roland ; and Trevanion 
seemed to pay no particular court to Ellinor. 

“But the time approached when I ought to speak. 
The house began to thin. Lord Rainsforth had leisure 
to resume his easy conferences with me : and one day, 
walking in his garden, he gave me the opportunity ; for 
I need not say, Pisistratus,” said my father, looking at 
me earnestly, “ that before any man of honor, if of in- 
ferior worldly pretensions, will open his heart seriously 
to the daughter, it is his duty to speak first to the parent, 
whose confidence has imposed that trust.” I bowed my 
head, and colored. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


283 


know not liow it was,” continued my father, “but 
jrd Rainsforth turned the conversation on Ellinor. 
‘^'ter speaking of his expectations in his son, who was 
rt-*j!irning home, he said : ‘ But he will of course enter 
piblic life -r- will, I trust, soon marry, have a separate 
establishment, and • I shall see but little of him. My 
Ellinor! — I cannot bear the thought of parting wholly 
with her. And that, to say the selfish truth, is one 
reason why I have never wished her to marry a rich man, 
and so leave me for ever. I could hope that she will 
give herself to one who may be contented to reside at 
least a great part of the year with me, who may bless 
me with another son, not steal from me a daughter. I 
do not mean that he should waste his life in the country ; 
his occupations would probably lead him to London. I 
care not where my house is — all I want is to keep my 
home. You know’ (he added, with a smile that I 
thought meaning,) ‘how often I have implied to you 
that I have no vulgar ambition for Ellinor. Her portion 
must be very small, for my estate is strictly entailed, and 
I have lived too much up to my income all my life to 
hope to save much now. But her tastes do not require 
expense ; and while I live, at least, there need be no 
change. She can only prefer a man whose talents, con- 
genial to hers, will win their own career, and ere I die, 
that career may be made.’ Lord Rainsforth paused; 
and tnen^ — how, in what words I know not — but out 
all burst I — my long-suppressed, timid, anxious, doubt- 
ful. fearful love. The strange energy it had given to a 


284 


THE CAXTONS: 


nature till then so retiring and calm I My recent devo- 
tion to the law — my confidence that, with such a prize 
1 could succeed — it was but a transfer of labor from one 
study to another. Labor could conquer all things, and 
custom sjveeten them in the conquest. The bar was a 
ess brilliant career than the senate. But the first aim 
of the poor man should be independence. In short, Pisis- 
tratus, wretched egotist that I was, I forgot Boland in 
that moment ; and I spoke as one who felt his life was 
in his words. 

“ Lord Bainsforth looked at me, when I had done, 
with a countenance full of affection, but it was not 
cheerful. 

‘ My dear Caxton,’ said he, tremulously, ‘ I own that 
I once wished this — wished it from the hour I knew 
you ; but why did you so long — I never suspected tha 
. — nor, I am sure, did Ellinor.’ He stopped short, and 
added quickly — ‘ However, go and speak, as you have 
spoken to me, to Ellinor. Go, it may not yet be too late. 
And yet — but go.^ 

“ Too late I — what meant those words ? Lord Bains- 
forth had turned hastily down another walk, and left me 
alone, to ponder over an answer which concealed a 
riddle. Slowly I took my way towards the house, and 
sought Lady Ellinor, half hoping, half dreading to find 
her alone. There was a little room communicating with 
a conservatory, where she usually sat in the morning. 
Thither I took my course. 

“ That room — I see it still I — the walls covered with 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


285 


pictures from her own hand, many were sketches of the 
haunts we had visited together — the simple ornaments, 
womanly but not effeminate — the very books on the 
table, that had been made familiar by dear associations. 
Yes ; there, the Tasso in which we had read together the 
episode of Glorinda — there, the JEschylus in which I 
translated to her the Prometheus. Pedantries these 
might seem to some ; pedantries, perhaps, they were ; but 
they were proofs of that congeniality which had knit the 
man of books to the daughter of the world. That room, 
it was the home of my heart. Such, in my vanity of 
spirit, methought would be the air round a home to come. 

I looked about me, troubled and confused, and, halting 
timidly, I saw Ellinor before me, leaning her face on her 
hand, her cheek more flushed than usual, and tears in her 
eyes. I approached in silence, and as I drew my chair 
to the table, my eye fell on a glove on the floor. It was 
a man’s glove. Do you know,” said my father, “that 
once,' when I was very young, I saw a Dutch picture 
called The Glove, and the subject was of murder? 
There was a weed-grown marshy pool, a desolate dismal 
landscape, that of itself inspired thoughts of ill deeds and 
terror. And two men, as if walking by chance, came to 
this pool ; the finger of one pointed to a blood-stained' 
glove, and the eyes of both were fixed on each other, as 
if there were no need of words. That glove told its tale ! 
The picture had long haunted me in my boyhood, but it 
never gave me so uneasy and fearful a feeling as did that 
real glove upon the floor. Why ? My dear Pisistratus, 


286 


THE CAXTONS: 


the theory of forebodings involves one of those questions 
on which we may ask ‘ why ’ for ever. More chilled than 
I had been in speaking to her father, I took heart at last 
and spoke to Ellinor.” 

My father stopped short, the moon had risaa, and was 
shining full into the room and on his face. And by that 
light the face was changed ; young emotions had brought 
back youth — my father looked a young man. But what 
pain was there ! If the memory alone could raise what, 
after all, was but the ghost of suffering, what had been 
its living reality I Invpluntarily I seized his hand ; my 
father pressed it convulsively, and said with a deep 
breath — “ It was too late ; Trevanion was Lady Ellinor’s 
accepted, plighted, happy lover. My dear Katherine, I 
do not envy him now ; look up, sweet wife, look up I 


CHAPTER Till. 

“ Ellinor (let me do her justice) was shocked at my 
silent emotion. No human lip could utter more tender 
sympathy, more noble self-reproach ; but that was nc 
balm to my wound. So I left the house ; so I never re» 
turned to the law ; so all impetus, all motive for exertion, 
seemed taken from by being ; so I went back into books 
And so, a moping, despondent, worthless mourner might 
I have been to the end of my days, but that Heaven, in 
Jts mercy, sent thy mother, Pisistratus, across my path ; 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


287 


and day and niglit I bless God and her ; for I have been, 
and am — oh, indeed, I am, a happy man 1 ” 

My mother threw herself on my father’s breast, sobbing 
violently, and then turned from the room without a word ; 
my father’s eye, swimming in tears, followed her ; and 
then, after pacing the room for some moments in silence, 
he came up to me, and leaning his arm on my shoulder, 
whispered, “ Can you guess why I have now told you all 
this, my son ? ” 

“Yes, partly: thank you, father,” I faltered, and sat 
down, for I felt faint. 

“ Some sons,” said my father, seating himself beside 
me, “ would find in their father’s follies and errors an ex- 
cuse for their own ; not so will you, Pisistratus.” 

“ I see no folly, no error, sir ; only nature and sorrow.” 

“Pause ere you thus think,” said my father. “ Great 
was the folly and great the error, of indulging imagina- 
tion that had no basis — of linking the whole usefulness 
of my life to the will of a human creature like myself. 
Heaven did not design the passion of love to be this 
tyrant ; nor is it so with the mass and multitude of human 
life. We dreamers, solitary students like me, or half- 
poets like poor Roland, make our own disease. How 
many years, even after I had regained serenity, as youi 
mother gave me a home long not appreciated, have I 
wasted I The main-string of my existence was snapped 

I took no note of time. And therefore now, you see, 

late -in life, Nemesis wakes. I look back with regret at 
powers neglected, opportunities gone. Galranically J 


2^8 


THE C AXTONS : 


brace up energies half-palsied by disuse ; and you see me, 
rather than rest quiet and good for nothing, talked into 
what, I dare say, are sad follies, by an Uncle Jack I 
And now I behold Elliiior again ; and I say in wonder 
— ‘All this — all this — all this agony, all this torpor, 
for that haggard face, that worldly spirit I ' So is it 
ever in life : mortal things fade ; immortal things spring 
ij ore freshly with every step to the tomb. 

“Ah I ” continued my father, with a sigh, “ it would 
not have been so, if at your age I had found out the 
secret of the saffron bag I 


CHAPTER IX. 

“ And Roland, sir,” said I — “ how did he take it ? ” 

“ With all the indignation of a proud unreasonable man. 
More indignant, poor fellow, for me than himself. And 
so did he wound and gall me by what he said of Ellinor, 
and so did he rage against me because I would not share 
his rage, that again we quarrelled. We parted, and did 
not meet for many years. We came into sudden pos- 
session of our little fortunes. His he devoted (as you 
may know) to the purchase of the old ruins, and the com- 
mission in the army, which had always been his dream — 
and so went his way, wrathful. My share gave me an 
excuse for indolence — it satisfied all my wants ; and when 
my old tutor died, and his 'young child became my ward, 
and, somehow or other, from my w'ard my wife, it allowed 
me to resign my fellowship, and live amongst my books 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


289 


— still as a book myself. One comfort, somewhat before 
my marriage, I had conceived ; and that, too, Roland has 
since said was comfort to him. Ellinor became an heiress. 
Her poor brother died ; and all of the estate that did not 
pass in the male line devolved on her. That fortune 
made a gulf between us almost as wide as her marriage. 
For Ellinor, poor and portionless, in spite of her rank, I 
could have worked, striven, slaved ; but Ellinor rich 1 it 
would have crushed me. This was a comfort. But still, 
still the past — that perpetual aching sense of something 
that had seemed the essential of life withdrawn from life, 
evermore, evermore I What was left was not sorrow, — 
it was a void. Had I lived more with men, and less with 
dreams and books, I should have made my nature large 
enough to bear the loss of a single passion. But in soli- 
tude we shrink up. No plant so much as man needs the 
sun and the air. I comprehend now why most of our best 
and wisest men have lived in capitals ; and therefore again I 
say, that one scholar in a family is enough. Confiding in 
your sound heart and strong honor, I turn you thus be- 
times on the world. Have I done wrong ? Prove that 
I have not, my child. Do you know what a very good 
man has said ? Listen and follow my precept, not ex- 
ample. 

“ ‘ The state of the world is such, and so much depends 
on action, that everything seems to say aloud to every 
man, ‘ Do something — do it — do it I ’ 


* Remains of the Rev. Richard Cecil, p. 349. 

I. — 25 


T 


290 


THE CAXTONS. 


I was profoundly touched, and I rose refreshed and 
hopeful, when suddenly the door opened, and who or what 
in the world should come in ; but certainly he, she, it, or 
they, shall not come into this chapter ! On that point I 
am resolved. No, my dear young lady, I am extremely 
flattered; — I feel for your curiosity; but really not a 
peep — not one I And yet — well then, if you will have 
it, and look so coaxingly — who or what, I say, should 
come in abrupt, unexpected — taking away one’s breath, 
not giving one time to say “ By your leave, or with youi 
leave,” but making one’s mouth stand open with surprisOj 
and one’s eyes fix m a big round stupid stare, but — 


THE END OF THE CHAPTER 


PART EIGHTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

There entered, in the front drawing-room of my father’s 
house in Russell Street — an Elf I 1 1 clad in white, — 
small, delicate, with curls of jet over her shoulders ; — 
with eyes so large and so lustrous that they shone through 
the room, as no eyes merely human could possibly shine. 
The Elf approached, and stood facing us. The sight was 
so unexpected, and the apparition so strange, that we re- 
mained for some moments in startled silence. At length 
my father, as the bolder and wiser man of the two, and 
the more fitted to deal with the eerie things of another 
world, had the audacity to step close up to the little 
creature, and, bending down to examine its face, said, 
“What do you want, my pretty child ? ” 

Pretty child I was it only a pretty child aftei all ? 
Alas, it would be well if all we mistake for fairies at the 
first glance could resolve themselves only into pretty chil 
dreh I 

“ Come,” answered the child, with a foreign accent, 

( 291 ) 


29i 


THE CAXTONS: 


and taking my father by the lappet of his coat, “ come, 
poor papa is so ill I I am frightened ! come — and save 
him.” 

“Certainly,” exclaimed my father, quickly: “where’s 
my hat, Sisty ? Certainly, my child, we will go and save 
papa. ” 

“But who is papa?” asked Pisistratus — a question 
that would never have occurred to my father. He never 
asked who or what the sick papas of poor children were, 
when the children pulled him by the lappet of his coat — 
“ Who is papa ? ” 

The child looked hard at me, and the big tears rolled 
from those large luminous eyes, but quite silently. At 
this moment a full-grown figure filled up the threshold, 
and emerging from the shadow, presented to us the aspect 
of a stout, well-favored young woman. She dropped a 
curtsey, and then said, mincingly, 

“ Oh, miss, you ought to have waited for me, and not 
alarmed the gentlefolks by running up-stairs in that way. 
If you please, sir, I was settling with the cabman, and he 
was so imperent : them low fellows always are, when they 
have only us poor women to deal with, sir, — and ” 

“ But what is the matter ? ” cried I, for my father had 
taken the child in his arms, soothingly, and she was now 
weeping on his breast. 

“ Why, you see, sir, (another curtsey,) the gent only 
arrived last night at our hotel, sir, — the Lamb, close by 
Lunnun Bridge — and he was taken ill — and he’s not 
quite in his right mind like : — so we sent for the doctor, 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


293 


and the doctor looked at the brass plate on the gent’s 
carpet-bag, sir, — and he then looked into the Court 
Guide, and he said, ‘ There is a Mr. Caxton in Great 
Russell Street, — is he any relation ? ’ and this young lady 
said, ‘ That’s my papa’s brother, and we were going there, * 
And so, sir, as the Boots was out, I got into a cab, and 
Miss would come with me, and ” 

“ Roland — Roland ill I Quick — quick, quick I ” cried 
my father, and, with the child still in his arms, he ran 
down the stairs. I followed with his hat, which of course 
he had forgotten. A cab, by good luck, was passing our 
very door ; but the chambermaid would not let us enter 
it till she had satisfied herself that it was not the same 
she had dismissed. This preliminary investigation com- 
pleted, we entered, and drove to the Lamb. 

The chambermaid, who sate opposite, passed the time 
in inelfectual overtures to relieve my father of the little 
girl, who still clung nestling to his breast, — in a long 
epic, much broken into episodes, of the causes which had 
led to her dismissal of the late cabman, who, to swell his 
fare, had thought proper to take a “ circumbendibus ! ” — 
and with occasional tugs at her cap, and smoothings down 
of her gown, and apologies for being such a figure, es- 
pecially when her eyes rested on my satin cravat, or 
dropped on my shining boots. 

A rrived at the Lamb, the chambermaid, with conscious 
dignity, led us up a large staircase, which seemed inter- 
minable. As she mounted the region above the third 
qtory, she paused to take breath, and inform us, apolo 
25 * 


294 


THE CAXTONS: 


gotically, that the house was full, but that, if the gent’’ 
stayed over Friday, he would be moved into No. 54, 
“with a look-out and a chimbly.” My little cousin now 
slipped from my father’s arms, and, running up the stairs, 
beckoned to us to follow. We did so, and were led to a 
door, at which the child stopped and listened ; then, 
taking off her shoes, she stole in on tiptoe. We entered 
after her. 

By the light of a single candle we saw my poor uncle’s 
face ; it was flushed with fever, and the eyes had that 
bright, vacant stare which it is so terrible to meet. Less 
temble is it to find the body wasted, the features sharp 
with the great life-struggle, than to look on the face from 
which the mind is gone, — the eyes in which there is no 
recognition. Such a sight is a startling shock to that 
unconscious habitual materialism with which we are apt 
familiarly to regard those we love : for, in thus missing 
the mind, the heart, the affection that sprang to ours, we 
are suddenly made aware that it was the something with- 
in the form, and not the fom itself, that was so dear to 
us. The form itself is still, perhaps, little altered ; but 
that lip which smiles no welcome, that eye which wanders 
over us as strangers, that ear which distinguishes no 
more our voices, — the friend we sought is not there I 
Even our own love is chilled back — grows a kind of 
vague superstitious terror. Yet, it was not the matter, 
still present to us, which had conciliated all those subtle 
nameless sentiments which are classed and fused in the 
word '' affection f — it was the airy, intangible, elev'tric 
Bomethinq — the absence of which now appals us. 


A FAMILY PICTURE 


295 


I stood speechless — my father crept on, and took the 
hand that returned no pressure : — The child only did not 
seem to share our emotions, but, clambering on the bed, 
laid her cheek on the breast, and was still. 

“ Pisistratus,” whispered my father, at last, and I stole 
near, hushing my breath, — “Pisistratus, if your mother 
wore here I ” 

I nodded : the same thought had struck us both. His 
deep wisdom, my active youth, both felt their nothingness 
then and there. In the sick chamber, both turned help- 
lessly to miss the woman. 

So I stole out, descended the stairs, and stood in the 
open air in a sort of stunned amaze. Then the tramp 
of feet, and the roll of wheels, and the great London roar, 
revived me. That contagion of practical life which lulls 
the heart and stimulates the brain, — what an intellectual 
mystery there is in its common atmosphere I In another 
moment I had singled out, like an inspiration, from a 
long file of those ministrauts of our Trivia, the cab of the 
lightest shape and with the strongest horse, and was on 

my way, not to my mother’s but to Dr. M H , 

Manchester Square, whom I knew as the medical adviser 
to the Trevanions. Fortunately, that kind and able phy- 
sician was at home, and he promised to be with the 
sufferer before I myself could join him. I then drove to 
Russell Street, and broke to my mother, as cautiously as 
I could, the intelligence with which I was charged. 

When we arrived at the Lamb, we found the doctor 
already writing his prescription and injunctions ; the ac- 


296 


THE CAXTONSi-' 


tivitj of the treatment announced tlie danger. I fle\\ for 
the surgeon who had been before called in. Happy 
those who are strangers to that indescribable silent bustle 
which the sick-room at times presents — that conflict 
which seems almost hand to hand between life and death 
• — \^hen all the poor, unresisting, unconscious frame is 
given up to the war against its terrible enemy ; the dark 
blood flowing — flowing ; the hand on the pulse, the 
hushed suspense, every look on the physician’s bended 
brow ; then the sinaplasms to the feet, and the ice to the 
head ; and now and then, through the lull of the low 
whispers, the incoherent voice of the sufferer — babbling, 
perhaps, of green fields and fairy-land, while your hearts 
are breaking I Then, at length, the sleep — in that 
sleep, perhaps, the crisis — the breathless watch, the slow 
waking, the first sane words — the old smile again, only 
fainter — your gushing tears, your low “Thank God I 
thank God I ” 

Picture all this ; it is past : Roland has spoken his 

sense has returned — my mother is leaning over him 

his child’s small hands are clasped round his neck — the 
surgeon, who has been there six hours, has taken up bis 
hat, and smiles gaily as he nods farewell — and my father 
is leaning against the wall, his face covered with hia 
hands. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


291 


CHAPTER II. 

Ali this had been so sudden that, to use the trite 
phrase — for no other is so expressive — it was like a 
dream. I felt an absolute, an imperious want of solitude, 
of the open air. The swell of gratitude almost stifled 
me — the room did not seem large enough for my big 
heart. In early youth, if we find it difficult to control 
our feelings, so we find it difficult to vent them in the 
presence of others. On the spring side of twenty, if 
anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in our 
rooms, or get away into the streets or fields ; in our 
earlier years we are still the savages of Nature, and we 
do as the poor brute does — the wounded stag leaves the 
herd, and if there is anything on a dog’s faithful heart, 
he slinks away into a corner. 

Accordingly, I stole out of the hotel, and wandered 
through the streets, which were quite deserted. It was 
about the first hour of dawn, the most comfortless hour 
there is, especially in London I But I only felt freshness 
in the raw air, and soothing in the desolate stillness. 
The love my uncle inspired was very remarkable in its 
nature : it was not like that quiet affection with which 
those advanced in life must usually content themselves, 
but connected with the more vivid interest that youth 


298 


THE CAXTONS: 


awakens. There was in him still so much of vivacity 
and fire, in his errors and crotchets so much of the self- 
delusion of youth, that one could scarce fancy him other 
than young. Those Quixotic exaggerated notions of 
honor, that romance of sentiment, which no hardship, 
care grief, disappointment, could wear away, (singular 
in a period when, at two-and-twenty, young men declare 
themselves blasts!) seemed to leave him all the charm 
of boyhood. A season in London had made me more a 
man of the world, older in heart than he was. Then, 
the sorrow that gnawed him with such silent sternness. 
No, Captain Roland was one of those men who seize 
hold of your thoughts, who mix themselves up with your 
lives. The idea that Roland should die — die with the 
load at his heart uiilightened, was one that seemed to 
take a spring out of the wheels of nature, an object out 
of the aims of life — of my life at least. For I had ;n?ide 
it one of the ends of my existence to bring back the son 
to the father, and restore the smile that must have been 
gay once, to the downward curve of that iron lip. But 
Roland was now out of danger — and yet, like one who 
has escaped shipwreck, I trembled to look back on the 
danger past ; the voice of the devouring deep still boomed 
in my ears. While wrapt in my reveries, I stopped me- 
chanically to hear a clock strike — four; and, looking 
round, I perceived that I had wandered from the heart 
of the city, and was in one of the streets that lead out 
of the Strand. Immediately before me, on the doorsteps 
of a large shop, whose closed shutters wore as obstinate 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


299 


B stillness as if they had guarded the secrets of seventeen 
centuries in a street in Pompeii — reclined a form %st 
asleep ; the arm propped on the hard stone supporting 
the head, and the limbs uneasily strewn over the stairs. 
The dress of the slumberer was travel-stained, tattered, 
yet with the remains of a certain pretence : an air of 
faded, shabby, penniless gentility, made poverty moro 
painful, because it seemed to indicate unfitness to grapple 
with it. The face of this person was hollow and pale, 
but its expression, even in sleep, was fierce and hard. 1 
drew near and nearer ; I recognised the countenance, the 
regular features, the raven hair, even a peculiar graceful- 
ness of posture : the young man whom I had met at the 
inn by the way-side, and who had left me alone with the 
Savoyard and his mice in the churchyard, was before me. 
I remained behind tlie shadow of one of the columns of 
the porch, leaning against the area rails, and irresolute 
whether or not so slight an acquaintance justified me in 
waking the sleeper, when a policeman, suddenly emerging 
from an angle in the street, terminated my deliberations 
with the decision of his practical profession ; for he laid 
hold of the young man’s arm and shook it roughly — 
“You must not lie here ; get up and go home I” The 
sleeper woke with a quick start, rubbed his eyes, looked 
round, and fixed them upon the policeman so haughtily, 
that that discriminating functionary probably thought 
that it was not from sheer necessity that so improper a 
couch had been selected, and with an air of greater re- 
spect, ne said : “ You have been drinking, young man — 
can you find your way home ? ” 


300 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ Yos,” said the youth, resettling himself, “you see I 
have found it I ” 

“By the Lord Harry!” muttered the policeman, “if 
he ben’t going to sleep again I Come, come, walk on, or 
I must walk you olf.” 

My old acquaintance turned round. “ Policeman,” 
said he, with a strange sort of smile, “ what do you think 
this lodging is worth? — I don’t say for the night, for 
you see that is over, but for the next two hours ? The 
lodging is primitive, but it suits me ; I should think a 
shilling would be a fair price for it — eh?” 

“You love your joke, sir,” said the policeman, with 
a brow much relaxed, and opening his band mechani- 
cally. 

“ Say a shilling, then — it is a bargain I I hire it 
of you upon credit. Good night, and call me at six 
o’clock.” 

With that the young man settled himself so resolutely, 
and the policeman’s face exhibited such bewilderment, 
that I burst out laughing, and came from my hiding- 
place. 

The policeman looked at me. “ Do you know this 

this ” 

“ This gentleman ? ” said I, gravely. “ Yes, you may 
leave him to me ; ” and I slipped the price of the lodging 

into the policeman’s hand. He looked at the shilling 

he looked at me — he looked up the street and down the 
street — shook his head, and walked off. I then ap- 
proached the youth, touched him, and said — “ Can you 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


801 


remember me, sir ; and what have you done with Mr. 
Peacock ? ” 

Stranger (after a pause). — “ I remember you ; youi 
name is Caxton.’^ 

PisiSTRATUS. — “And yours ? 

Stranger. — “P oor devil, if you ask my pockets — 
[)ockets, which are the symbols of man ; Dare-devil, if 
you ask my heart. (Surveying me from head to foot) — 
The world seems to have smiled on you, Mr. Caxton 1 
Are you not ashamed to speak to a wretch lying on the 
stones? — but, to be sure, no one sees you.” 

Pisistratus (sententiously). — “ Had I lived in the 
last century, I might have found Samuel Johnson lying 
on the stones.” 

Stranger (rising). — “You have spoilt my sleep ; you 
had a right, since you paid for the lodging. Let me 
walk with you a few paces ; you need not fear — I do not 
pick pockets — yet 1 ” 

Pisistratus. — “You say the world has smiled on me ; 
I fear it has frowned on you. I don’t say ‘courage,’ for 
you seem to have enough of that ; but I say ‘patiencef^ 
which is the rarer quality of the two.” 

Stranger. — “ Hem I ” (again looking at me keenly) 
“Why is it that you stop to speak to me — one of whom 
you know nothing, or worse than nothing ?” 

Pisistratus — “Because I have often thought of you; 
because you interest me ; because — pardon me — I would 
help you if I can — that is, if you want help. ” 

Stranger. — “Want ! I am one want I I want sleep — 

r. — 26 


30‘2 


THE CAXTONS: 


I want food : — I want the patience you recommend — 
patience to starve and rot. I have travelled from Paris 
to Boulogne on foot, with twelve sous in my pocket. Out 
of those twelve sous in my pocket I saved four ; wilh the 
four I went to a billiard-room at Boulogne ; I won just 
enough to pay my passage and buy three rolls. You see 
I only require capital in order to make a fortune. If 
with four sous I can win ten francs in a night, what could 
I win with a capital of four sovereigns, and in the course 
of a year ? — that is an application of the Rule of Three 
which my head aches too much to calculate just at present. 
Well, those three rolls have lasted me three days ; the 
last crumb went for supper last night. Therefore, take 
care how you offer me money (for that is what men mean 
by help). You see I have no option but to take it. But 
I warn you, don’t expect gratitude I — I have none in me 1” 

PisiSTRASUS. — “You are not so bad as you paint 
yourself. I would do something more for you if I can, 
than lend you the little I have to offer. Will you be 
frank with me ? ” 

Stranger. — “That depends — I have been frank 
enough hitherto, T think.” 

Pisistratus. — “ True ; so I proceed without scruj^le. 
Don’t tell me your name or your condition, if you object 
to such confidence ; but tell me if you have relations to 
whom you can . apply ? You shake your head : well, then, 
are you willing to work for yourself ? or is it only at the 
billiard-table (pardon me) that you can try to make four 
sous produce ten francs ? ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


30& 


Stranger (musing). — “I understand you. I have 
never worked yet — I abhor work. But 1 have no oo- 
jection to try if it is in me.” 

PisiSTRATUS. — “It is in you ; a man who can walk 
from Paris to Boulogne with twelve sous in his pocket, 
and save four for a purpose — who can stake those four 
on the cool confidence in his own skill, even at billiards — 
who can subsist for three days on three rolls — and who, 
on the fourth day, can wake from the stones of a capital 
with an eye and a spirit as proud as yours, has in him aV 
the requisites to subdue fortune.” 

Stranger. — “Do you work ? — you ? ” 

PisiSTRATUS. — “Yes — and hard.” 

Stranger. — I am ready to work, then.” 

PisiSTRATUS. — “ Good. Now, what can you do 
Stranger (with his odd smile). — “ Many things use- 
ful. I can split a bullet on a penknife ; I know the secret 
tierce of Coulon, the fencing-master ; I can speak two 
languages (besides English) like a native, even to their 
slang : I know every game in the cards : I can act comedy, 
tragedy, farce : I can drink down Bacchus himself : I can 
make any woman I please in love with me — that is, any 
woman good-for-nothing. Can I earn a handsome liveli- 
hood out of all this — wear kid gloves, and set up a 
cabriolet ? You see my wishes are modest ! ” 

PisiSTRATUS. — “You speak two languages, yon =av, 
like a native — Erench, I suppose, is one of them ? ” 
Stranger. — “ Yes.” 

PisiSTRATUS. — “ Will you teach it ?” 


THE CAXTONS: 


no4 

Stranger (haughtily). — “ No. Je suis gentilliomme^ 
which means more or less than a gentleman. Geniilhomme 
means well born, because free born — teachers are slaves ! ” 

PisiSTRATUS (unconsciously imitating Mr. Trevanion). 
— “Stuff I” 

Stranger (looks angry, and then laughs). — “Yery 
true ; stilts don’t suit shoes like these I But I cannot 
teach : heaven help those I should teach I — anything 
else ? ” 

PisiSTRATUs. — “Anything else I — you leave me a 
wide margin. You know French thoroughly — to write 
as well as speak ? — that is much. Give me some address 
where I can find you — or will you call on me ? ” 

Stranger. — “ No I Any evening at dusk I will meet 
you. I have no address to give ; and I cannot show 
these rags at another man’s door.” 

PISISTRATUS. — “At nine in the evening, then, and 
here in the Strand, on Thursday next. I may then have 

found something that will suit you. Meanwhile ” 

(slides his purse into the Stranger’s hand. N.B. — Purse 
not very full). 

Stranger, with the air of one conferring a favor, pockets 
the purse ; and there is something so striking in the very 
absence of all emotion at so accidental a rescue from star- 
vation, that Pisistratus exclaims — 

“ I don’t know why I should have taken this fancy to 
fou, Mr. Daredevil, if that be the name that pleases you 
Dest. The wood you are made of seems cross-grained, 
and full of knots ; and yet, in the hands of a skilful ( arver, 
I think it would be worth much.” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


305 


Stranger (startled). — “ Do you ? do you ? None, 1 
believe, ever thought that before. But the same wood, I 
suppose, that makes the gibbet, could make the mast of a 
man-of-war. I tell you, however, why you have taken 
this fancy to me — the strong sympathize with the strong. 
You, too, could subdue fortune I ” 

PisiSTRATUS. — “ Stop ; if so — if there is congeniality 
between us ; then liking should be reciprocal. Come, say 
that ; for half my chance of helping you is in my power to 
touch your heart.” 

Stranger (evidently softened). — “If I were as great 
a rogue as I ought to be, my answer would be easy 
enough. As it is, I delay it. Adieu. — On Thursday.” 

Stranger vanishes in the labyrinth of alleys round 
Leicester Square. 


CHAPTER III. 

On my return to The Lamb, I found that my uncle 
was in a soft sleep ; and after a morning visit from the 
surgeon, and his assurance that the fever was fast sub- 
siding, and all cause for alarm was gone, I thought it 
necessary to go back to Trevanion’s house, and explain 
the reason for my night’s absence. But the family had 
not returned from the country. Trevanion himself came 
up for a few hours in the afternoon, and seemed to feel 
much for my poor uncle’s illness. Though, as usual, very 
26* II 


300 


THE CAXTONS: 


busy, he accompanied me to The Lamb, to see my father, 
and cheer him up. Roland still continued to mend, as 
the surgeon phrased it ; and as we went back to St. 
James’s Square, Trevaiiion had the consideration to re- 
lease me from my oar in his galley for the next few days. 
My mind, relieved from my anxiety for Roland, now 
turned to my new friend. It had not been without an 
object that I had questioned the young man as to his 
knowledge of French. Trevanion had a large correspond- 
ence in foreign countries which was carried on in that 
language, and here I could be but of little help to him. 
He himself, though he spoke and wrote French with 
fluency and grammatical correctness, wanted that intimate 
knowledge of the most delicate and diplomatic of all 
languages to satisfy his classical purism. For Trevanion 
was a terrible word-weigher. His taste was the plague 
of my life and his own. His prepared speeches (or 
rather perorations) were the most finished pieces of cold 
diction that could be conceived under the marble portico 
of the Stoics, — so filed and turned, trimmed and tamed, 
that they never admitted a sentence that could warm the 
heart, or one that could offend the ear. He had so great 
a horror of a vulgarism that, like Canning, he would 
have made a periphrasis of a couple of lines to avoid 
using the word “ cat.” It was only in extempore speak- 
ing that a ray of his real genius could indiscreetly betray 
itself. One may judge what labor such a super-refine- 
ment of taste would inflict upon a man writing in a 
language not his own to some distinguished statesman, 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


301 


or some literary institution, — knowing that language 
just well enough to recognise all the native elegances he 
fiiiled to attain. Trevanion, at that very moment, was 
employed upon a statistical document intended as a com- 
munication to a Society at Copenhagen, of which he was 
an honorary member. It had been for three weeks the 
torment of the whole house, especially of poor Fanny 
(whose French was the best at our joint disposal.) But 
Trevanion had found her phraseology too mincing, too 
effeminate, too much that of the boudoir. Here, then, 
was an opportunity to introduce my new friend, and test 
the capacities that I fancied he possessed. I therefore, 
though with some hesitation, led the subject to “ Remarks 
on the Mineral Treasures of Great Britain and Ireland ” 
(such was the title of the work intended to enlighten the 
savans of Denmark;) and, by certain ingenious circum- 
locutions, known to all able applicants, I introduced my 
acquaintance with a young gentleman who possessed the 
most familiar and intimate knowledge of French, and 
who might be of use in revising the manuscript. I knew 
enough of Trevanion to feel that I could not reveal the 
circumstances under which I had formed that acquaint- 
ance, for he was much too practical a man not to have 
been frightened out of his wits at the idea of submitting 
so classical a performance to so disreputable a scapegrace. 
As it was, however, Trevanion, whose mind at that 
moment was full of a thousand other things, caught at 
my suggestion, with very little cross-questioning on the 
subject, and before he left London, consigned the manu- 
script to my charge. 


308 


THE CAXTONS; 


My friend is poor,” said I, timidly. 

Oh I as to that,” cried Trevanion hastily, “if it be a 
matter of charity, I put my purse in your hands ; but 
don’t put my manuscript in his ! If it be a matter of 
business, it is another affair ; and I must judge of his 
work before I can say how much it is worth — perhaps 
nothing I ” 

So ungracious was this excellent man in his very 
virtues I 

“ Nay,” said I, “it is a matter of business, and so we 
will consider it.” 

‘ “ In that case,” said Trevanion, concluding the matter, 

and buttoning his pockets, “ if I dislike his work, 
nothing ; if I like it, twenty guineas. Where are the 
evening papers ? ” and in another moment the Member 
of Parliament had forgotten the statist, and was pishing 
and tutting over the Globe or the Sun. 

On Thursday, my uncle was well enough to be moved 
into our house ; and on the same evening, I went forth 
to k'iep my appointment with the stranger. The clock 
struck nine as we met. The palm of punctuality might 
be divided between us. He had profited by the interval, 
since our last meeting, to repair the more obvious de- 
ficiencies of his wardrobe ; and though there was some- 
thing still wild, dissolute, outlandish, about his whole 
appearance, yet in the elastic energy of his step, and the 
resolute assurance of his bearing, there was that which 
Nature gives to her own aristocracy, — for, as far as my 
observation goes, what has been called the “ grand air ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


309 


(and which is wholly distinct from the polish of manner, 
or the urbane grace of high breeding) is always ac- 
companied, and perhaps produced, by two qualities — 
courage, and the desire of command. It is more common 
to a half-savage nature than to one wholly civilized. 
The Arab has it, so has the American Indian : and I 
suspect that it was more frequent among the knights and 
barons of the Middle Ages than it is among the polished 
gentlemen of the modern drawing-room. 

We shook hands, and walked on a few moments in 
silence ; at length thus commenced the Stranger : — 

“You have found it more diflScult, I fear, than you 
imagined, to make the sack stand upright. Considering 
that at least one-third of those born to work cannot find 
it, why should I ? ” 

PiSiSTRATUS. — “I am hard-hearted enough to believe 
that work never fails to those who seek it in good earnest. 
It was said of some man, famous for keeping his word, 
that ‘ if he had promised you an acorn, and- all the oaks 
in England failed to produce one, he would have sent to 
Norway for an acorn.’ If I wanted work, and there was 
none to be had in the Old World, I would find my way 
to the New. But, to the point : I have found something 
for you, which I do not think your taste will oppose, and 
which may open to you the means of an honorable inde- 
pendence. But I cannot well explain it in the streets : 
where shall we go ? ” 

Stranger (after some hesitation). — “ I have a lodg- 
ing near here, which I need not blush to ’take you to — I 
mean, that it is not among rogues and cast-aways.” 


310 


THE CAXTONS: 


PisiSTRATUS (much pleased, and taking the stranger’s 
arm). — “ Come, then.” 

Pisistratus and the stranger pass over Waterloo Bridge, 
and pause before a small house of respectable appearance. 
Stranger admits them both with a latch-key — leads the 
way to the third story — strikes a light, and does the 
honors to a small chamber, clean and orderly. Pisistra- 
tus explains the task to be done, and opens the manu- 
script. The stranger draws his chair deliberately towards 
the light, and runs his eye rapidly over the pages. Pisis- 
tratus trembles to see him pause before a long array of 
figures and calculations. Certainly it does not look in- 
viting ; but, pshaw 1 it is scarcely a part of the task which 
limits itself to the mere correction of words. 

Stranger (briefly). — “ There must be a mistake here 
— stay I — I see — ” (He turns back a few pages, and 
corrects with rapid precision an error in a somewhat com- 
plicated and abstruse calculation'). 

Pisistratus (surprised). — “ ou seem a notable arith- 
metician. ” 

Stranger. — “ Did I not tell you that I was skilful in 
all games of mingled skill and chance ? It requires an 
arithmetical head for that : a first-rate card-player is a 
financier spoilt. I am certain that you never could find 
a man fortunate on the turf, or at the gaming-table, who 
had not an excellent head for figures. Well, this French 
is good enough apparently ; there are but a few idioms, 
here and there, that, strictly speaking, are more English 
than French. But the whole is a work scarce worth pity- 
ing for ! ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


31 


PisisTRATUs, — “The work of the head fetcnes a pnce 
ftot proyjortioned to the quantity, but to the quality. 
When shall I call for this ! ” 

Stranger. — “ To-morrow.” (And he puts the manu- 
script away in a drawer.) 

We then conversed bn various matters for nearly an 
hour ; and my impression of this young man’s natural 
ability was confirmed and heightened. But it was an 
ability as wrong and perverse in its directions or instincts 
as a French novelist’s. He seemed to have, to a high 
degree, the harder portion of the reasoning faculty, but to 
be almost wholly without the arch beautifier of character, 
that sweet purifier of mere intellect — the imagination. 
For, though we are too much taught to be on our guard 
against imagination, I hold it, with Captain Roland, to 
be the divinest kind of reason we possess, and the one 
that leads us the least astray. In youth, indeed, it occa- 
sions errors, but they are not of a sordid or debasing na- 
ture. Newton says that one final effect of the comets is 
to recruit the seas and the planets by a condensation of 
the vapors and exhalations therein ; and so even the 
erratic flashes of an imagination really healthful and 
vigorous deepen our knowledge and brighten our lights ; 
they recruit our seas and our stars. Of such flashes my 
new friend was as innocent as the sternest matter-of-fact 
person could desire. Fancies he had in profusion, and 
very bad ones ; but of imagination not a scintilla! His 
mind was one of those which live in a prison of logic, and 
eannoi, or will nofC^see beyond the bars : such a nature is 


312 


THE CAXTONS: 


at once positive and sceptical. This boy had thought 
proper to decide at once on the numberless complexities 
of the social world from his own harsh experience. With 
him the whole system was a war and a cheat. If the 
universe were entirely composed of knaves, he would be 
sure to make his way. Now this bias of mind, alike 
shrewd and unamiable, might be safe enough if accom- 
panied by a lethargic temper ; but it threatened to become 
terrible and dangerous in one who, in default of imagina- 
tion, possessed abundance of passion : and this was the 
case with the young outcast. Passion, in him, compre- 
hended many of the worst emotions which militate against 
human happiness. You could not contradict him, but 
you raised quick choler ; you could not speak of wealth, 
but the cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonish- 
ing natural advantages of this poor boy — his beauty, 
his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him 
like a fiery atmosphere — had raised his constitutional 
self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very 
claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Iras- 
cible, envious, arrogant — bad enough, but not the worst, 
for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold 
repellant cynicism — his passions vented themselves in 
sneers. There seemed in him no moral susceptibility ; 
and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little 
or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a 
morbid excess, that desire to rise, which is vulgarly called 
ambition, but no apparent wish for fame, or esteem, o^ 
the love of his species ; only the hard wish to succeed, 


AFAMILY PICTURE. 


313 


uot shine, not serve, — succeed, that he might have the 
right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit, and 
enjoy the pleasures which the redundant nervous life in 
him seemed to crave. Such were the more patent attri- 
butes of a character that, ominous as it was, yet interested 
me, and yet appeared to me to be redeemable, — nay, to 
have in it the rude elements of a certain greatness. 
Ought we not to make something great out of a youth 
under twenty, who has, in the highest degree, quickness 
to conceive and courage to execute ? On the other hand, 
all faculties that can make greatness, contain those that 
can attain goodness. In the savage Scandinavian, or 
the ruthless Frank, lay the germs of a Sydney or a Bay- 
ard. What would the best of us be, if he were suddenly 
placed at war with the whole world ? And this fierce 
spirit was at war with the whole world — a war self- 
sought, perhaps, but it was war uot the less. You must 
surround the savage with peace, if you want the virtues 
of peace. 

1 cannot say that it was in a single interview and con- 
ference that I came to these convictions ; but I am rather 
summing up the impression which 1 conceived as I saw 
more of this person, whose destiny I presumed to take 
under my charge. 

In going away, I said, “But, at all events, you have a 
name in your lodgings : whom am I to ask for when- 1 cal) 
to-morrow ? ” 

“ Oh, you may know my name now,” said he, smiling ; 
'It is Vivian — Francis Vivian.” 

1 . — 27 


CHAPTER IV. 


I REMEMBER One moming, when a boy, loitering by 
an old wall, to watch the operations of a garden spider, 
whose web seemed to be in great request. When I first 
stopped, she was engaged very quietly with a fly of the 
domestic species, whom she managed with ease an^d 
dignity. But just when she was most interested in that 
absorbing employment, came a couple of May-flies, and 
then a gnat, and then a blue-bottle — all at different 
angles of the web. Never was a poor spider so distracted 
by her good fortune I She evidently did not know which 
godsend to take first. The aboriginal victim being re- 
leased, she slid half-way towards the May-flies ; then one 
of her eight eyes caught sight of the blue-bottle I and 
she shot ofl* in that direction : — when the hum of th| 
gnat again diverted her ; and in the middle of this per- 
plexity, pounce came a young wasp in a violent passion I 
Then the spider evidently lost her presence of mind ; she 
became clean demented : and after standing, stupid and 
stock-still, in the middle of her meshes, for a minute or 
two, she ran off to her hole as fast as she could run, and 
left her guests lo shift for themselves. I confess that 1 
am somewhat in the dilemma of the attractive and amiable 
insect I have just described. I got on well enough while 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


315 


I had only my domestic fly to see after. But now that 
there is something fluttering at every end of my net (and 
especially since the advent of that passionate young wasp, 
who is fuming and buzzing in the nearest corner) I I am 
fairly at a loss which I should first grapple with — and 
alas I unlike the spider, I have no hole where I can hide 
myself, and let the web do the weaver’s work. But I 
will imitate the spider as far as I can ; and while the rest 
hum and struggle away their impatient, unnoticed hour, 
I will retreat into- the inner labyrinth of my own life. 

The illness of my uncle, and my renewed acquaintance 
with Yivian, had naturally sufficed to draw my thoughts 
from the rash and unpropitious love I had conceived for 
Fanny Trevanion. During the absence of the family 
from London (and they stayed some time longer than 
had been expected), I had leisure, however, to recall my 
father’s touching history, and the moral it had so ob- 
viously preached to me ; and I formed so many good 
resolutions, that it was with an untrembling hand that 1 
welcomed Miss Trevanion at last to London, and with a 
firm heart that I avoided, as much as possible, the fatal 
charm of her society. The slow convalescence of my 
uncle gave me a just excuse to discontinue our rides. 
What time Trevanion spared me, it was natural that I 
should spend with my family. I went to no balls nor 
parties. I even absented myself from Trevanion’s periodi- 
cal dinners. Miss Trevanion at first rallied me on my 
seclusion, with her usual lively malice. But I continued 
wor’^hily to complete ra 3 r martyrdom. I took care that 


S16 


THE CAXTONS: 


no rcprosichful look at the gaiety that wrung ray soul 
should betray ray secret. Then Fanny seemed either 
hurt or disdainful, and avoided altogether entering her 
father’s study ; all at once she changed her tactics, and 
was seized with a strange desire for knowledge, which 
brought her into the room to look for a book, or ask a 
question, ten times a day. I was proof to all. But, to 
speak truth, I was profoundly wretched. Looking back 
now, I am dismayed at the remembrance of my own suf- 
ferings ; my health became seriously affected ; I dreaded 
alike the trial of the day and the anguish of the night. 
My only distractions were in my visits to Vivian, and my 
escape to the dear circle of home. And that home was 
my safeguard and preservative in that crisis of my life ; 
its atmosphere of unpretending honor and serene virtue 
strengthened all my resolutions ; it braced me for my 
struggles against the strongest passion which youth ad- 
mits, and counteracted the evil vapors of that air in 
which Vivian’s envenomed spirit breathed and moved. 
Without the influence of such a home, if I had succeeded 
in the conduct that probity enjoined towards those in 
whose house I was a trusted guest, I do not think I could 
have resisted the contagion of that malign and morbid 
bitterness against fate and the world, which love, thwarted 
by fortune, is too inclined of itself to conceive, and in 
the expression of which Vivian was not without the elo- 
quence that belongs to earnestness, whether in truth or 
falsehood. But, somehow or other, I never left the 
little room that contained the grand suffering in the fact 


A FAMILY PICTURE 


3n 

of the veteran soldier, whose lip, often quivering with 
anguish, was never heard to murmur ; and the tranquil 
wisdom which had succeeded my father’s early trials 
(trials like my own), and the loving smile on my mother’s 
tender face, and the innocent childhood of Blanche (by 
which name the Elf had familiarised herself to us), whom 
I already loved as a sister — without feeling that those 
four walls contained enough to sweeten the world, had it 
been filled to its capacious brim with gall and hyssop. 

Trevanion had been more than satisfied with Vivian’s 
performance — he had been struck with it. For though 
the corrections in the mere phraseology had been very 
limited, they went beyond verbal amendments — they 
suggested such words as improved the thoughts ; and, 
besides that notable correction of an arithmetical error, 
which Trevanion’s mind was formed to over-appreciate, 
one or two brief annotations on the margin were boldly 
hazarded, prompting some stronger link in a chain of 
reasoning, or indicating the necessity for some further 
evidence in the assertion of a statement. And all this 
from the mere natural and naked logic of an acute mind, 
unaided by the smallest knowledge of the subject treated 
of I Trevauion threw quite enough work into Vivian’s 
hands, and at a renumeration sufficiently liberal to realise 
my promise of an independence. And more than once 
he asked me to introduce to him my friend. But this I 
continued to elude — heaven knows, not from jealousy, 
but simply because I feared that Vivian’s manner and 
way of talk would singularly displease one who detested 
27 * 


818 


THE CAXTONS: 


presi mption, aod understood no eccentricities but his 
own. 

Still, Vivian, whose industry was of a strong wing, but 
only for short flights, had not enough to employ more 
than a few hours of his day, and I dreaded lest he should, 
from very idleness, fall back into old habits, and re-scek 
old friendships. His cynical candor allowed that both 
were sufficiently disreputuble to justify grave apprehen- 
sions of such a result ; accordingly, I contrived to find 
leisure in my evenings to lessen his ennui, by accompany- 
ing him in rambles through the gas-lit streets, or oc- 
casionally, for an hour or so, to one of the theatres. 

Vivian’s first care, on finding himself rich enough, had 
been bestowed on his person ; and those two faculties of 
observation and imitation which minds so ready always 
eminently possess, had enabled him to achieve that grace 
ful neatness of costume peculiar to the English gentle- 
man. For the first few days of his metamorphosis, 
traces indeed of a constitutional love of show, or vulgai 
companionship, were noticeable ; but one by one they 
disappeared. First went a gaudy neckcloth, with collars 
turned down ; then a pair of spurs vanished ; and lastly, 
a diabolical instrument that he called a cane — but 
which, by means of a running bullet, could serve as a 
bludgeon at one end, and concealed a dagger in the 
other — subsided into the ordinary walking-stick adapted 
to our peaceable metropolis. A similar change, though 
in a less degree, gradually took place in his manner and 
his conversation. He grew less abrupt in the one, and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


31S 


mor calm, perhaps more cheerful, in the other. It was 
evident that he was not insensible to the elevateo 
pleasure of providing for himself by praiseworthy ex- 
ertion — of feeling for the first time that his intellect wag 
of use to him, creditably. A new world, though still 
dim — seen through mist and fog — began to dawn upon 
him 

Such is the vanity of us poor mortals, that my interest 
in Vivian was probably increased, and my aversion to 
much in him materially softened, by observing that I had 
gained a sort of ascendency over his savage nature. 
When we had first met by the roadside, and afterwards 
conversed in the churchyard, the ascendency was certainly 
not on my side. But I now came from a larger sphere 
of society than that in which he had yet moved. I had 
seen and listened to the first men in England. What 
had then dazzled me only, now moved my pity. On the 
other hand, his active mind could not but observe the 
change in me ; and, whether from envy or a better feel- 
ing, he was willing to learn from me how to eclipse me, 
and resume his earlier superiority — not to be superior 
chafed him. Thus he listened to me with docility when 
I pointed out the books which connected themselves with 
the various subjects incidental to the miscellaneous 
matters on which he was employed. Though he had 
less of the literary turn of mind than any one equally 
clever I had ever met, and had read little, considering 
the quantity of thought he had acquired, and the show 
he made of the few works with which he had voluntarily 


320 


THE CAXTQNS: 


made himself familiar, he yet resolutely sate himself down 
to study ; and though it was clearly against the grain, 1 
augured the more favorably from tokens of a determina- 
tion to do what was at the present irksome for a purpose 
in the future. Yet, whether I should have approved the 
purpose had I thoroughly understood it is another ques- 
tion I There were abysses, both in his past life and in 
his character, which I could not penetrate. There was 
in him both a reckless frankness and a vigilant reserve : 
his frankness was apparent in his talk on all matters im- 
mediately before us ; in the utter absence of all effort to 
make himself seem better than he was. His reserve was 
equally shown in the ingenious evasion of every species 
of confidence that could admit me into such secrets of his 
life as he chose to conceal : where he had been born, 
reared, and educated ; how he came to be thrown on his 
own resources ; how he had contrived, how he had sub- 
sisted, were all matters on which he had seemed to take 
an oath to Harpocrates, the god of silence. And yet he 
was full of anecdotes of what he had seen, of strange 
companions whom he never named, but with whom he 
had been thrown. And, to do him justice, I remarked 
that, though his precocious experience seemed to have 
been gathered from the holes and corners, the sewers ai d 
drains of life, and though he seemed wholly without dis- 
like to dishonesty, and to regard virtue or vice with as 
serene an indifference as some grand poet who views 
them both merely as ministrants to his art, yet he never 
betrayed any positive breach of honesty in himself. He 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


821 


could lauj]fh over the story of some ingenious fraud that 
he had witnessed, and seem insensible to its turpitude ; 
but he spoke of it in the tone of an approving witness, 
not of an actual accomplice. As we grew more intimate, 
he felt gradually, however, that pudor, or instinctive 
shame, which the contact with minds habituated to the 
•list] notions between wrong and right unconsciously pro- 
duces, and such stories ceased. He never but once 
mentioned his family, and that was in the following odd 
and abrupt manner : — 

“Ah I ” cried he one day, stopping suddenly before a 
print-shop, “how that reminds me of my dear, dear 
mother.” 

“ Which ? ” said I eagerly, puzzled between an en- 
graving of Raffaelle’s “Madonna,” and another of “The 
Brigand’s Wife.” 

Vivian did not satisfy my curiosity, but drew me on in 
spite of my reluctance. 

“ You loved your mother, then ? ” said I, after a pause. 

“Yes, as a whelp may a tigress.” 

“ That’s a strange comparison. ” 

“ Or a bull-dog may the prize-fighter, his master 1 
Do you like that better ? ” 

“Not much; is it a comparison your mother Wwuld 
like?” 

“ Like ? — she is dead I ” said he, rather falteringly. 

I pressed his arm closer to mine. 

“ I understand you,” said he, with his cynic repellant 
smile. “ But you do wrong to feel for my loss. I feel 
V 


322 


THE CAXTONS: 


for it ; but no one who cares for me should sympathize 
with my grief.” 

“ Why ? ” 

“ Because my mother was not what the world would caD 
a good woman. I did not love her the less for that. And 
now let us change the subject.” 

“ Nay ; since you have said so much, Vivian, let me 
coax you to say on. Is not your father living ? ” 

“ Is not the Monument standing ? ” 

“ I suppose so ; what of that ? ” 

“Why, it matters very little to either of us ; and my 
question answers yours ! ” 

I could not get on after this, and I never did get on a 
step farther. I must own that if Vivian did not impart 
his confidence liberally, neither did he seek confidence in- 
quisitively from me. He listened with interest if I spoke 
of Trevanion (for I told him frankly of my connection 
with that personage, though you may be sure that I said 
nothing of Fanny), and of the brilliant world that my 
residence with one so distinguished opened to me. But 
if ever, in the fulness of my heart, I began to speak of my 
parents, of my home, he evinced either so impertinent an 
ennui, or assumed so chilling a sneer, that I usually 
hurried away from him, as well as the subject, in indig- 
nant disgust. Once especially, when I asked him to let 
me introduce him to my father — a point on which I was 
really anxious, for I thought it impossible but that the 
devil within him would be softened by that contact — h? 
said, with his low, scornful laugh — 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


323 


“My dear Caxton, when I was a child, I was so bored 
^ ith ‘ Telemachus,’ that in order to endure it, I turned 
it into travesty.” 

‘ Well ? ” 

‘ Are you not afraid that the same wicked disposition 
mig it make a caricature of your Ulysses ?” 

I did not see Mr. Vivian for three days after that 
speech ; and I should not have seen him then, only we met, 
by accident, under the Colonnade of the Opera-House. 
Vivian was leaning against one of the columns, and 
watching the long procession which swept to the only 
temple in vogue that Art has retained in the English 
Babel. Coaches and chariots, blazoned with arms and 
coronets — cabriolets (the brougham had not then re- 
placed them) of sober hue, but exquisite appointment, 
with gigantic horses and pigmy “ tigers,” dashed on, and 
rolled off before him. Fair women and gay dresses, stars 
and ribbons — the rank and the beauty of the patrician 
world — passed him by. And I could not resist the com- 
passion with which this lonely, friendless, eager, discon- 
tented spirit inspired me — gazing on that gorgeous ex- 
istence in which it fancied itself formed to shine, with the 
ardor of desire and the despair of exclusion. By one 
glimpse of that dark countenance, I read what was passing 
within the yet dark :r heart. The emotion might not be 
amiable, nor the thoughts wise, yet, were they unnatural ? 
f had experienced something of them — not at the sight 
of gay-dressed people, of wealth and idleness, pleasure 
and fashion ; but when, at the doors of Parliament, men 


324 


THE CAXTONS: 


who have won noble names, and whose word had weight 
on the destinies of glorious England, brushed heedlessly 
by to their grand arena ; or when, amidst the holiday 
crowd of ignoble pomp, I had heard the murmur of fame 
buzz and gather round some lordly laborer in art or let- 
ters : that contrast between glory so near, and yet so far, 
and one’s own obscurity, of course I had felt it — who has 
not ? Alas ! many a youth not fated to be a Themistocles, 
will yet feel that the trophies of a Miltiades will not suffer 
him to sleep I So I went up to Yivian and laid my hand 
on his shoulder. 

“ Ah I ” said he, more gently than usual, “ I am glad to 
see you, and to apologise — I offended you the other day. 
But you would not get very gracious answers from souls 
in purgatory if you talked to them of the happiness ot 
heaven. Never speak to me about homes and fathers 1 
Enough ! I see you forgive me. Why are you not going 
to the opera ? You can ? ” 

“ And you too, if you so please. A ticket is shamefully 
dear, to be sure ; still, if you are fond of music, it is a 
luxury you can afford.” 

‘‘ Oh, you flatter me if you fancy the prudence of saving 
withholds me I I did go the other night, but I shall not 
go again. Music I — when you go to the opera, is it for 
the music ? ” 

“ Only partially, I own : the lights, the scene, the page 
ant, attract me quite as much. But I do not think the 
opera a very profitable pleasure for either of us. For rich 
idle people, I dare say, it may be as innocent an arauso- 
ment as any other, but I find it a sad encrvatoi ’’ 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


325 


And I just the reverse — a horrible stimulant ! Cax- 
toL, do you know that, ungracious as it will sound to you, 
I am growing impatient of this ‘ honorable independence I ’ 
What does it lead to ? — board, clothes, and lodging, — 
can it ever bring me anything more ? ” 

“ At first, Yivian, you limited your aspirations to kid 
gloves and a cabriolet : it has brought the kid gloves ab 
ready ; by-and-by it will bring the cabriolet I ’’ 

“ Our wishes grow by what they feed on. You live in 
the great world — you can have excitement if you please 
it — I want excitement, I want the world, I want room 
for my mind, man ! Do you understand me ? ” 

“‘Perfectly — and sympathise with you, my poor 
Vivian ; but it will all come. Patience, as I preached to 
you while dawn rose so comfortless over the streets of 
London. You are not losing time ; fill your mind ; read, 
study, fit yourself for ambition. Why wish to fly till you 
have got your wings ? Live in books now : after all, 
they are splendid palaces, and open to us all, rich and 
poor.” 

“ Books, books 1 — ah I you are the son of a bookman. 
It is not by books that men get on in the world, and enjoy 
life in the meanwhile.” 

“ I don’t know that ; but, my good fellow, you want to 
do both — get on in the world as fast as labor can, and 
enjoy life as pleasantly as indolence may. You want to 
live like the butterfly, and yet have all the honey of the 
Dee ; and, what is the very deuce of the whole, even as 
the butterfly, you ask every flower to grow up in a mo- 
I. —28 


326 


THE CAXTONS: 


meiat ; and, as a bee, the whole hive must be stored in a 
quarter of an hour I Patience, patience, patience.” 

Yivian sighed a fierce sigh. “I suppose,” said he, 
after an unquiet pause, ” that the vagrant and the outlaw 
are strong in me, for I long to run back to my old ex- 
istence, which was all action, and therefore allowed no 
thought.” 

While he thus said, we had wandered round the Colon- 
nade, and were in that narrow passage in which is situa- 
ted the more private entrance to the opera : close by the 
doors of that entrance, two or three young men were 
lounging. As Vivian ceased, the voice of one of these 
loungers came laughingly to our ears. 

“ Oh I ” it said, apparently in answer to some question, 

I have a much quicker way to fortune than that ; I 
mean to marry an heiress I ” 

Vivian started, and looked at the speaker. He was a 
very good-looking fellow. Vivian continued to look at 
him, and deliberately, from head to foot ; he then turned 
away with a satisfied and thoughtful smile. 

“Certainly,” said I, gravely (construing the smile), 
“ you are right there ; you are even better-looking than 
that heiress-hunter 1 ” 

Vivian colored ; but before he could answer, one of the 
loungers, as the group recovered from the gay laugh 
which their companion’s easy coxcombry had excited, 
said, — 

“ Then, by the way, if you want an heiress, here comes 
one of the greatest in England ; but instead of beins’ • 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


327 


younger son, with three good lives between you and an 
Irish peerage, one ought to be an earl at least to aspire 
to Fanny Trevanion I ” 

The name thrilled through me — I felt myself tremble ; 
and, looking up, I saw Lady Ellinor and Miss Trevanion, 
as they hurried from their carriage towards the entrance 
of the opera. They both recognised me, and Fanny 
cried, — 

“ You here I How fortunate I You must see us into 
the box, even if you run away the moment after.” 

But I am not dressed for the opera,” said I, embar* 
rassed. 

And why not ? ” asked Miss Trevanion ; then, drop- 
ping her voice, she added, “ Why do you desert us so 
wilfully ? ” — and, leaning her hand on my arm, I was 
drawn irresistibly into the lobby. The young loungers 
at the door made way for us, and eyed me, no doubt, 
with envy. 

‘‘ Nay I ” said I, affecting to laugh, as I saw Miss Tre- 
vanion waited for my reply. “ You forget how little time 
I have for such amusements now — and my uncle ” 

“ Oh, but mamma and I have been to see your uncle 
to-day, and he is nearly well — is he not, mamma ? I 
cannot tell you how I like and admire him. He is j:-st 
what I fancy a Douglas of the old day. But mamma is 
impatient. Well, you must dine with us to-morrow — 
promise ! — not adieu but au revoir,^^ and Fanny glided 
to her mother’s arm. Lady Ellinor, always kind and 
courteous to me, had good-naturedly lingered till this 
dialogue, or rather monologue, was over. 


328 


THE CAXTONS: 


On returning to the passage, I found Vivian walking 
to and fro ; he had lighted his cigar, and w'as smoking 
energetically. 

“ So this great heiress,” said he, smiling, “ who, as fur 
as I could see — under her hood — seems no less fair than 
rich, is the daughter, I presume, of the Mr. Trevanion, 
whose effusions you so kindly submit to me. He is very 
rich, then ? You never said so, yet I ought to have 
known it; but you see I know nothing of your heau 
iXionde — not even that Miss Trevanion is one of the 
greatest heiresses in England.” 

“ Yes, Mr. Trevanion is rich,” said I, repressing a 
sigh — “ very rich.” 

“ And you are his secretary ! My dear friend, you 
may well offer me patience, for a large stock of yours 
will, I hope, be superfluous to you.” 

“I don’t understand you.” 

Yet you heard that young gentleman, as well as my- 
self ; and you are in the same house as the heiress.” 

Vivian ! ” 

“Well, what have I said so monstrous?” 

“ Pooh 1 since you refer to that young gentleman, you 
heard, too, what his companion told him, — ‘ one ought 
to be an earl, at least, to aspire to Fanny Trevanion 

“ Tut 1 as well say that one ought to be a millionaire 
to aspire to a million 1 — yet I believe those who make 
millions generally begin with pence.” 

“ That belief should be a comfort and encouragement 
to you, Vivian. And, npw, good-night, — I have much 
to do ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


32b 


“ Good-night, then,” said Vivian, and we parted. 

I made my way to Mr. Trevanion’s house, and to the 
study. There was a formidable arrear of business waiting 
for me, and I sate down to it at first resolutely ; but by 
degrees I found my thoughts wandering from the eternal 
blue-books, and the pen slipped from my hand, in the 
midst of an extract from a Report on Sierra Leone. My 
pulse beat loud and quick ; I was in that state of nervous 
fever which only emotion can occasion. The sweet voice 
of Fanny rang in my ears ; her eyes, as I had last met 
them, unusually gentle — almost beseeching — gazed upon 
me wherever I turned : and then, as in mockery, I heard 
again those words, — “ One ought to be an earl, at least, 
to aspire to” — Oh I did I aspire ? Was I vain fool so 
frantic? — household traitor so consummate? No, no I 
Then what did I under the same roof? — why stay to im- 
bibe this sweet poison, that was corroding the very 
springs of my life? At that self- question, which, had I 
been but a year or two older, I should have asked long 
before, a mortal terror seized me ; the blood rushed from 
my heart, and left me cold — icy cold. To leave the 
house — leave Fanny I — never again to see those eyes — 
never to hear that voice I better die of the sweet poison 
than of the desolate exile I I rose — I opened the win- 
dows — I walked to and fro the room: I could decide 
nothing — think of nothing ; all my mind was in an up- 
roar. With a violent effort at self-mastery, I approached 
the table again. I resolved to force myself to my task, 
'f it were only to re-collect my faculties, and enable them 
28* 


£>30 


THE CAXTONS: 


to Lear raj o\ni torture. I turned over the books impa^ 
tienlly, when, lo I buried amongst them, what met my 
eye? — archly, yet reproachfully — the face of Fanny 
herself ! Her miniature was there. It had been, I knew, 
taken a few days before by a young artist whom Treva- 
nion patronised. I suppose he had carried it into his 
study to examine it, and so left it there carelessly. The 
painter had seized her peculiar expression, her ineffable 
%mile — so charming, so malicious ; even her favorite pos- 
ture — the small head turned over the rounded Hebe-like 
shoulder — the eye glancing up from under the hair. I 
know not what change in my madness came over me ; 
but I sank on my knees, and, kissing the miniature again 
and again, burst into tears. Such tears 1 I did not hear 
the door open — I did not see the shadow steal over the 
floor : a light hand rested on my shoulder, trembling as it 
rested — I started. Fanny herself was bending over me 1 

“What is the matter ?” she asked, tenderly. “What 
has happened ? — your uncle — your family — all well ? 
Why are you weeping ? ” 

I could not answer; but I kept my hands clasped 
over the miniature, that she might not see what they 
contained. 

“ Will you not answer ? Am I not your friend— almost 
your sister ? Come, shall I call mamma ? ” 

“Yes — yes; go — go.” 

“No, I will not go yet. What have you there? — 
what are you hiding ? ” 

And innocently, and sister-like, those hands took mine ; 


A FAMILY PICT IRE. 


331 


and so — and so — the picture became visible I There 
was a dead silence. I looked up through my tears 
Fanny had recoiled some steps, and her cheek was very 
flushed, her eyes downcast. I felt as if I had committed, 
a crime — as if dishonor clung to me; and yet, I re- 
pressed — yes, thank Heaven I I repressed the cry that 
swelled from my heart, and rushed to my lips — “Pity 
me, for I love you I ” I repressed it, and only a groan 
escaped me — the wail of my lost happiness I Then, 
rising, I laid the miniature on the table, and said, in a 
voice that I believe was firm — 

“ Miss Trevanion, you have been as kind as a sister to 
me, and therefore I was bidding a brother’s farewell to 
your likeness ; it is so like you — this I ” 

“ Farewell I ” echoed Fanny, still not looking up. 
“Farewell — sister! There, I have boldly said the 
word ; for — for ” — I hurried to the door, and, there 
turning, added, with what I meant to be a smile — “ for 
they say at home that I — I am not well ; too much for 
me this ; you know, mothers will be foolish ; and — and-— 
I am to speak to your father to-morrow; and — good 
uight — God bless you, Miss Trevanion I ” 


PxiRT NINTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

And my father pushed aside his books. 

O young reader, whoever thou art — or reader, at 
least, who hast been young — canst thou not remember 
some time when, with thy wild troubles and sorrows as 
yet borne in secret, thou hast come back from that hard, 
stern world, which opens on thee when thou puttest thy 
foot out of the threshold of home — come back to the 
four quiet walls, wherein thine elders sit in peace — and 
seen, with a sort of sad amaze, how calm and undis- 
turbed all is there ? That generation which has gone 
before thee in the path of the passions — the generation 
of thy parents (not so many years, perchance, remote 
from thine own) — how immovably far off, in its still re- 
pose, it seems from thy turbulent youth I It has in it a 
stillness as of .a classic age, antique as the statues of the 
Greeks. That tranquil monotony of routine into which 
those lives that preceded thee have merged — the occu- 
pations that they have found sufficing for their happiness, 

( 332 ) 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


333 


by tlie fireside — in the arm-chair and corner appro- 
priated to each — how strangely they contrast thine own 
feverish excitement ! And they make room for thee, and 
])id thee welcome, and then resettle to their hushed pur- 
suits, as if nothing had happened I Nothing had hap- 
pened ? while in thy heart, perhaps, the whole .vorld 
seems to have shot from its axis, all the elements to be 
at war ! And you sit down, crushed by that quiet 
happiness which you can share no more, and smile 
mechanically, and look into the fire ; and, ten to one, 
you say nothing till the time comes for bed, and you 
take up your candle, and creep miserably to your lonely 
room. 

Now, if in a stage-coach in the depth of winter, when 
three passengers are warm and snug, a fourth, all be- 
snowed and frozen, descends from the outside and takes 
place amongst them, straightway all the three passengers 
shift their places, uneasily pull up their cloak collars, re- 
arrange their “ comforters,” feel indignantly a sensible 
loss of caloric — the intruder has at least made a sensa- 
tion. But if you had all the snows of the Grampians 
in your heart, you might enter unnoticed ; take care not 
to tread on the toes of your opposite neighbor, and not 
a soul is disturbed, not a “ comforter ” stirs an inch I J 
had not slept a wink, I had not even laid down all that 
night — the night in which I had said farewell to Fanny 
Trevanion — and the next morning, when the sun rose, I 
wandered out — where I know not. I have a dim recol- 
lection of long, grey, solitary streets — of the river that 


334 


THE CAXTONS: 


seemed flowing in dull, sullen silence, away, far away, 
into some invisible eternity — trees and turf, and tlie gay 
voices of children. I must have gone from one end of 
the great Babel to the other : but my memory only be- 
came clear and distinct when I knocked, somewhere be- 
fore noon, at the door of my father’s house, and, passing 
heavily up the stairs, came into the drawing-room, which 
was the rendezvous of the little family ; for, since we had 
been in London, my father had ceased to have his study 
apart, and contented himself with what he called “a 
corner ” — a corner wide enough to contain two tables 
and a dumb-waiter, with chairs d discretion all littered 
with books. On the opposite side of this capacious 
corner sat my uncle, now nearly convalescent, and he was 
jotting down, in his stiff, military hand, certain figures in 
a little red account-book — for you know already that 
my uncle Roland was, in his expenses, the most methodi- 
cal of men. 

My father’s face was more benign than usual, for before 
him lay a proof — the first proof of his first work — his 
one work — the Great Book I Yes! it had positively 
found a press. And the first proof of your first work — 
ask any author what that is 1 My mother was out, with 
the faithful Mrs. Primmins, shopping or marketing, no 
doubt ; so, while the brothers were thus engaged, it was 
natural that my entrance should not make as much noise 
as if it had been a bomb, or a singer, or a clap of thun- 
<ler, or the last “ great novel of the season,” or anything 
else that made a noise in those days. For what makes a 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


335 


noise now? Now, when the most astonishing thing of 
all is our easy familiarity with things astounding — when 
we say, listlessly, “Another revolution at Paris,” or, “By 
the by, there is the deuce to do at Vienna I ” — when De 
Joinville is catching fish in the ponds at Claremont, and 
you hardly turn back to look at Metternich on the pier 
at Brighton I 

My uncle nodded, and growled indistinctly ; my father — 

“ Put aside his books ; you have told us that already.” 

Sir, you are very much mistaken ; it was not then that 
he put aside his books, for he was not then engaged in 
them — he was reading his proof. And he smiled, and 
pointed to it (the proof I mean) pathetically, and with 
a kind of humor, as much as to say — “what can you ex- 
pect, Pisistratus ? — my new baby in short clothes — or 
long primer, which is all the same thing I ” 

I took a chair becween the two, and looked first at one, 
then at the other - - heaven forgive me I — I felt a re- 
bellious, ungrateful spite against both. The bitterness 
of my soul must have been deep indeed, to have over- 
flowed in that direction, but it did. The grief of youth 
is an abominable egotist, and that is the truth. I got 
up from the chair, and walked towards the window ; it 
was open, and outside the window was Mrs. Primmins’ 
canary, in its cage. London air had agreed with it, and 
it was singing lustily. Now, when the canary saw me 
standing opposite to its cage, and regarding it seriously, 
and, I have no doubt, with a very sombre aspect, the 
creature stopped short, and hung its head on one side, 


H36 


THE CAXTONS. 


looking at me obliquely and suspiciously. Finding that 
] did it no harm, it began to hazard a few broken notes^ 
timidly and interrogatively, as it were, pausing between 
each ; and at length, as I made no reply, it evidently 
thought it had solved the doubt, and ascertained that I 
was more to be pitied than feared — for it stole gradually 
Into so soft and silvery a strain, that I verily believe it 
' did it on purpose to comfort me I — me, its old friend, 
whom it had unjustly suspected. Never did any music 
touch me so home as did that long, plaintive cadence. 
And when the bird ceased, it perched itself close to the 
bars of the cage, and looked at me steadily with its 
bright intelligent eyes. I felt mine water, and I turned 
back and stood in the centre of the room, irresolute what 
to do, where to go. My father had done with the proof, 
and was deep in his folios. Roland had clasped his red 
account-book, restored it to his pocket, wiped his pen 
carefully, and now watched me from under his great 
beetle-brows. Suddenly he arose, and, stamping on the 
Hearth with his cork leg, exclaimed : “ Look up from 
those ^iirsed books, brother Austin ! What is there in 
yf'ur son’s; face? Construe that, if you caul” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


337 


CHAPTER II. 

A ND my father pushed aside his books, and rose hastily. 
He took off his spectacles, and rubbed them mechanically, 
but he said nothing ; and my uncle, staring at him for a 
moment, in surprise at his silence, burst out — 

“Oh I I see ; he has been getting into some scrape, 
and you are angry. Fie I young blood will have its way, 
Austin, it will. I don’t blame that — it is only when — 
come here, Sisty. Zounds I man, come here.” 

My father gently brushed off the Captain’s hand, and, 
advancing towards me, opened his arms. The next 
moment I was sobbing on his breast. 

“ But what is the matter ? ” cried Captain Roland — 
“ will nobody say what is the matter ? Money, I sup- 
pose — money, you confounded extravagant young dog. 
Luckily you have got an uncle who has more than he 
knows what to do with. How much ? Fifty ? — a 
hundred ? — two hundred ? How can I write the cheque, 
if you’ll not speak.” 

“ Hush, brother I it is no money you can give that will 
set this right. My poor boy I Have I guessed truly ? 
Did I guess truly ? the other evening, when ” 

“ Yes, sir, yes I I have been so wretched. But I am 
better now — I can tell you all.” 

I. — 29 w 


338 


THE CAXTONS: 


My ancle moved slowly towards the door : his fine sense 
of delicacy made him think that even he was out of place 
in the confidence between son and father. 

“No, uncle,” I said, holding out my hand to him, 
“ stay ; you too can advise me — strengthen me. I bav« 
kept my honor yet — help me to keep it still.” 

At the sound of the word honor. Captain Roland stood 
mute, and raised his head quickly. 

So I told all — incoherently enough at first, but clearly 
and manfully as I went on. Now I know that it is not 
the custom of lovers to confide in fathers and uncles. 
Judging by those mirrors of life, plays and novels, they 
choose better; — valets and chambermaids, and friends 
whom they have picked up in the street, as I had picked 
up poor Francis Yivian — to these they make clean 
breasts of their troubles. But fathers and uncles — to 
them they are close, impregnable, “buttoned to the chin.” 
The Caxtons were an eccentric family, and never did any- 
thing like other people. When I had ended, I lifted up 
my eyes, and said pleadingly, “Now, tell me, is there no 
hope — none ? ” 

“ Why should there be none ? ” cried Captain Roland 
hastily — “ The Be Caxtons are as good a family as the 
Trevanions ; and as for yourself, all I will say is, that the 
young lady might choose worse for her own happiness.” 

I wring my uncle’s hand, and turned to my father in 
anxious fear, for I knew that, in spite of his secluded 
habits, few men ever formed a sounder judgment on 
worldly matters, when he was fairly drawn to look at tliera 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


33S 


A thing wonderful is that plain wisdom which scholars 
and poets often have for others, though they rarely deign 
to use it for themselves. And how on earth do they get 
at it ? I looked at my father, and the vague hope Roland 
had excited fell as I looked. 

“ Brother,” said he slowly, and shaking his head, “ the 
world, which gives codes and laws to those who live in it, 
does not care much for a pedigree, unless it goes with a 
title-deed to estates.” 

“Trevanion was not richer than Pisistratus when he 
married Lady Ellinor,” said my uncle. 

. “ True ; but Lady Ellinor was not then an heiress ; and 
her father viewed these matters as no other peer in 
England perhaps would. As for Trevanion himself, I 
dare say he has no prejudices about station, but he is 
strong in common sense. He values himself on being a 
practical man. It would be folly to talk to him of love, 
and the affections of youth. He would see in the son of 
Austin Caxton, living on the interest of some fifteen or 
sixteen thousand pounds, siich a match for his daughter 
as no prudent man in his position could approve. And 
as for Lady Ellinor” — 

“ She owes us much, Austin I ” exclaimed. Roland, his 
face darkening. 

“Lady Ellinor is now what, if we had known her 
better, she promised always to be — the ambitious, bril- 
liant scheming woman of the world. Is it not so. — 
Pisistratus ? ” 

I said nothing — I felt too much 


340 


THE CAXTONS : 


“ And does the girl like you ? — but I think it is clear 
she does I ” exclaimed Roland. “ Fate, fate ; it has. been 
a fatal family to us I Zounds I Austin, it was your fault. 
Why did you let him go there ? ” 

“ My son is now a man — at least in heart, if not in 
years — can man be shut from danger and trial ? They 
found me in the old parsonage, brother I” said my father 
mildly. 

My uncle walked, or rather stumped, three times up 
and down the room ; and he then stopped short, folded 
his arms, and came to a decision — 

“ If the girl likes you, your duty is doubly clear — you 
can’t take advantage of it. You have done right to leave 
the house, for the temptation might be too strong.” 

“But what excuse shall I make to Mr. Trevanion ? ” 
said I feebly — “ what story can I invent ? So careless 
as he is while he trusts, so penetrating if he once suspects, 

he will see through all my subterfuges, and — and ” 

“It is as plain as a pike-staff,” said my uncle, abruptly 
— “ and there need be no subterfuge in the matter. ‘ I 
must leave you, Mr, Trevanion.’ ‘ Why ? ’ says he. * Don’t 
ask me.’ He insists. * Well then, sir, if you must know, I 
love your daughter. I have nothing, she is a greaT: 
heiress. You will not approve of that love, and there- 
fore I leave you I ’ That is the course that becomes an 
English gentleman. Eh, Austin ? ” 

“ You are never wrong when your instincts speak, Ro- 
land,” said ray father. “ Can you say this, Pisistratus, or 
shall I say it for you ? ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


341 


“Let him say it himself,” said Roland j “ and let him 
judge himself of the answer. He is young, he is clever, 
he may make a figure in the world. Trevanion may 
answer, ‘ Win the lady after you have won the laurel, like 
the knights of old.^ At all events, you will hear the worst.” 

“ I will go,” said I firmly ; and I took my hat and left 
the room. As I was passing the landing-place, a light 
step stole down the upper flight of stairs, and a little hand 
seized my own I turned quickly, and met the full, dark, 
seriously sweet eyes of my cousin Blanche. 

“ Don’t go away yet, Sisty,” said she coaxingly. “ I 
have been waiting for you, for I heard your voice, and did 
not like to come in and disturb you.” 

“ And why did you wait for me, my little Blanche ? ” 

“ Why I only to see you. But your eyes are red. Oh, 
cousin I ” — and, before I was aware of her childish im- 
pulse, she had sprung to my neck and kissed me. Now 
Blanche was not like most children, and was very sparing 
of her caresses. So it was out of the deeps of a kind 
heart that that kiss came. I returned it without a word ; 
and, putting her down gently, descended the stairs, and 
was in the streets. But I had not got far before I heard 
my father’s voice ; and he came up, and hooking his arm 
into mine, said, “Are there not two of us that suffer? — 
let us be together I ” I pressed his arm, and we walked 
on in silence. But when we were near Trevanion’s house, 
I said hesitatingly, “Would it not be better, sir, that I 
went in alone ? If there is to be an explanation between 
29 * 


842 


THE C AXTONS : 


Mr. Trevauiou and myself, would it not seem as if your 
presence implied either a request to him that would lower 
us both, or a doubt of me that — ” 

/‘You will go in alone, of course; I will wait for 
you — ” 

“Not in the streets — oh, no 1 father,” cried I, touched 
inexpressibly. For all this was so unlike my father’s 
habits, that I felt remorse to have so communicated my 
young griefs to the calm dignity of his serene life. 

“ My son, you do not know how I love you. I have 
only known it myself lately. Look you, I am living in 
you now, my first-born ; not in my other son — the Great 
Book : I must have my way. Go in ; that is the door, is 
it not ? ” 

I pressed my father’s hand, and I felt then, that while 
that hand could reply to mine, even the loss of Fanny 
Trevanion could not leave the world a blank. How 
much we have before us in life, while we retain our 
parents I How much to strive and to hope for I What 
a motive in the conquest of our sorrow — that they may 
not sorrow with us I 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


343 


CHAPTER III. 

I ENTERED Ti’evanion^s study. It was an hour it 
wliich lie was rarely at home, but I had not thought of 
that ; and I saw without surprise that, contrary to Ris 
custom, he was in his arm-chair, reading one of his 
favorite classic authors, instead of being in some com- 
mittee-room of the House of Commons. 

“A pretty fellow you are,” said he, looking up, “ to 
leave me all the morning, without rhyme or reason I 
And my committee is postponed — chairman ill; people 
who get ill should not go into the House of Commons. 
So here I am looking into Propertius : Parr is right ; 
not so elegant a writer as Tibullus. But what the deuce 
are you about ? — why don’t you sit down ? Humph I 
you look grave — you have something to say, — say it 1 ” 

And, putting down Propertius, the acute, sharp face 
of Trevanion instantly became earnest and attentive. 

“ My dear Mr. Trevanion,” said I with as much 
Kteadiness as I could assume, “you have been most kind 
to me ; and out of my own family there is no man I love 
and respect more.” 

Trevanion. — “ Humph I What’s all this ? (In an 
under-tone) — Am I going to be taken in ? ” 

PisiSTRATUS. — “ Do not think me ungrateful, then, 


344 


THE CAXT0N8: 


when I say I come to resign my oflBce — to lean the 
house where I have been so happy.” 

Trev ANION. — “Leave the house I Pooh 1 I have 
overtasked you. I will be more merciful in future. You 
must forgive a political economist ; it is the fault of iry 
sect to look upon men as machines.” 

PisiSTRATUS (smiling faintly). — “No, indeed; that 
is not itl I have nothing to complain of; nothing I 
could wish altered — could I stay.” 

Trev ANION (examining me thoughtfully). — “And does 
your father approve of your leaving me thus ? ” 

PisisTRATUs. — “Yes — fully.” 

Trev ANION (musing a moment). — “I see, he would 
send you to the University, make you a book-worm like 
himself: pooh I that will not do — you will never become 
wholly a man of books — it is not in you. Young man, 
though I may seem careless, I read characters, when I 
please it, pretty quickly. You do wrong to leave me; 
you are made for the great world — I can open to you a 
high career. I wish to do so I Lady Ellin or wishes it 
— nay, insists on it — for your father’s sake as well as 
yours. I never ask a favor from ministers, and I never 
will. But (here Trevanion rose suddenly, and, with an 
erect mien and a quick gesture of his arm, he added) — 
but a minister can dispose as he pleases of his patronage 
Look you, it is a secret yet, and I trust to your honor 
But, before the year is out, I must be in the cabinet. 
Stay with me, I guarantee your fortunes — three months 
ago I would not have said that. By and by I will open 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


345 


parliament for you — you are not of age yet — work till 
then. And now sit down and write my letters — a sad 
arrear 1 

“ My dear, dear Mr. Trevanion I ’’ said I, so affected 
that I could scarcely speak, and seizing his hand, which 
I pressed between both mine — “I dare not thank you 
— I cannot 1 But you don’t know my heart — it is not 
ambition. No I if I could but stay here on the same 
terms for ever — here ” — looking ruefully on that spot 
where Fanny had stood the night before. “But it is 
impossible I — if you knew all, you would be the first to 
bid me go I ” 

“ You are in debt,” said the man of the world, coldly. 
■‘Bad, very bad — still — ” 

“No, sir; no I worse” — 

“Hardly possible to be worse, young man — hardly i 
But, just as you will ; you leave me, and will not say 
why. Good-by. Why do you linger ? Shake hands, 
and go I ” 

“I cannot leave you thus : I — I — sir, the truth shall 
out. I am rash and mad enough not to see Miss Tre- 
vanion without forgetting that I am poor, and” — 

“ Ha I ” interrupted Trevanion softly, and growing 
pale, “ this is a misfortune, indeed ! And I, who talked 
of reading characters I Truly, truly, we would-be practical 
men are fools — fools I And you have made love to my 
daughter I ” 

“ Sir ? Mr. Trevanion ! — no — never, never so base ! 
Lq your house trusted by you, — how could you think 


346 


THE CAXTONS: 


it ? I dared, it may be, to love — at all events, to feel 
that I could not be insensible to a temptation too strong 
for me. But to say it to your heiress — to ask love in 
return — I would as soon have broken open your desk ! 
Frankly I tell you my folly : it is a folly, not a disgrace.’’ 

Trevanion came up to me abruptly, as I leant against 
the book-case, and, grasping my hand with a cordial 
kindness, said, “ Pardon me I You have behaved as 
your father’s son should — I envy him such a son 1 Now, 
listen to me — I cannot give you my daughter — ” 

‘‘Believe me, sir, I never — ” 

“ Tut, listen ! I cannot give you my daughter. I say 
nothing of inequality — all gentlemen are equal; and if 
not, any impertinent affectation of superiority, in such a 
case, would come ill from one who owes his own fortune 
to his wife I But, as it is, I have a stake in the world, 
won not by fortune only, but the labor of a life, the sup- 
pression of half my nature — the drudging, squaring, 
taming down all that made the glory and joy of my youth 
— to be that hard matter-of-fact thing which the English 
world expect in a statesman / This station has gradually 
opened into its natural result — power I I tell you I 
shall soon have high office in the administration : I hope 
to render great services to England — for we English 
politicians, whatever the mob and the press say of us, 
are not selfish place-hunters. I refused office, as high as 
I look for now, ten years ago. We believe in our 
opinions, and we hail the power that may carry them into 
effect. In this cabinet I shall have enemies. Oh, ton’t 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


S41 


think we leave jealousy behind us, at the doors of Down- 
ing Street I I shall be one of a minority. I know well 
what must happen : like all men in power, I must 
strengthen myself by other heads and hands than my own. 
My daughter shall bring to me the alliance of that house 
in England which is most necessary to me. My life falls 
to the ground, like a child’s pyramid of cards, if I waste 
— I do not say on you, but on men of ten times your 
fortune (whatever that be,) the means of strength which 
are at my disposal iii the hand of Fanny Trevanion. To 
this end I have looked ; but to this end her mother has 
schemed — for these household matters are within a man’s 
hopes, but belong to a woman’s policy. So much for us. 
But to you, my dear, and frank, and high-souled young 
friend — to you, if I were not Fanny’s father — if I were 
your nearest relation, and Fanny could be had for the 
asking, with all her princely dower (for it is princely,) — 
to you I should say, fly from a load upon the heart, on 
the genius, the energy, the pride, and the spirit, which 
not one man in ten thousand can bear ; fly from the curse 
of owing everything to a wife I — it is a reversal of all 
natural position, it is a blow to all the manhood within 
us. You know not what it is ; I do I My wife’s fortune 
came not till after marriage — so far, so well ; it saved 
my reputation from the charge of fortune-hunting. But, 
I tell you fairly, that if it never came at all, I should be 
a prouder, and a greater, and a happier man than I have 
ever been, or ever can be, with all its advantages ; it has 
been a millstone round my neck. And yet Ellinor has 


THE CAXTONS : 


US 

never breathed a word that could wound my pride. 
Would her daughter be as forbearing ? Much as I love 
Fanny, I doubt if she has the great heart of her mother. 
You look incredulous; — naturally. Oh, you think I 
shall sacrifice my child’s happiness to a politician’s 
ambition. Folly of youth I Fanny would be wretched 
with you. She might not think so now ; she would five 
years hence 1 Fanny will make an admirable duchess, 
countess, great lady ; but wife to a man who owes all to 
her I — no, no, don’t dream it I I shall not sacrifice her 
happiness, depend on it. I speak plainly, as man to man 
— man of the world to a man just entering it — but still 
man to man I What say you ? ” 

“ I will think over all you tell me. I know that you 
are speaking to me most generously — as a father would. 
Now let me go, and may God keep you and yours 1 ” 

“Go — I return your blessing — go I I don’t insult 
you now with offers of service ; but, remember, you have 
a right to command them — in all ways, in all times. 
Stop I — take this comfort away with you — a sorry com- 
fort now, a great one hereafter. In a position that might 
have moved anger, scorn, pity, you have made a barren- 
hearted man honor and admire you. You, a boy, have 
made me, with my grey hairs, think better of the whole 
world ; tell your father that. ” 

I closed the door, and stole out softly — softly. But 
when I got into the hall, Fanny suddenly opened -the door 
of the breakfast-parlor, and seemed, by her look, her ges- 
ture, to invite me in. Her face was very pale, and there 
were traces of tears on the heavy lids. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


349 


I stood still a moment, and my heart beat violently. 1 
then muttered something inarticulately, and, bowing low 
hastened to the door. 

I thought, but my ears might deceive me, that I heard 
my name pronounced ; but fortunately the tall porter 
started from his newspaper and his leathern chair, and 
the entrance stood open. I joined my father. 

It is all over,” said I, with a resolute smile. “ And 
now, my dear father, I feel how grateful I should be for 
all that your essons — your life — have taught me ; fbr, 
believe me, 1 am not unhappy.” 


CHAPTER lY. 

We came back to my father’s house, and on the stairs 
we met my mother, whom Roland’s grave looks, and her 
Austin’s strange absence, had alarmed. My father quietly 
led the way to a little room, which my mother had ap- 
propriated to Blanche and herself ; and then, placing my 
hand in that which had helped his own steps from the 
stony path down the quiet vales of life, he said to me, — 
“ Nature gives you here the soother ; ” and so saying, he 
left the room. 

And it was true, O my mother I that in thy simple 
loving breast nature did place the deep wells of comfort I 
We come to men for philosophy — to women for consola- 
tion. And the thousand weaknesses and regrets — th‘e 

I. — 30 


350 


THE CAXTONS: 


sharp sands of the minutiae that make up sorrow — all 
these, which I could have betrayed to no man — not even 
to him, the dearest and tenderest of all men — I showed 
without shame to thee I And thy tears, that fell on my 
cheek, had the balm of Araby ; and my heart, at length, 
lay lulled and soothed under thy most gentle eyes. 

I made an effort, and joined the little circle at dinner ; 
and I felt grateful that no violent attempt was made to 
raise my spirits — nothing but affection, more subdued, 
and soft, and tranquil. Even little Blanche, as if by the 
intuition of sympathy, ceased her babble, and seemed to 
hush her footsteps as she crept to my side. But after 
dinner, when we had reassembled in the drawing-room, 
and the lights shone bright, and the curtains were let 
down — and only the quick roll of some passing wheels 
reminded us that there was a world without — my father 
began to talk. He had laid aside all his work; the 
younger but less perishable child was forgotten, — and 
my father began to talk. 

“ It is,” said he musingly, “ a well-known thing, that 
particular drugs or herbs suit the body according to its 
particular diseases. When we are ill, we don’t open our 
medicine-chest at random, and take out any powder or 
phial that comes to hand. The skilful doctor is he who 
adjusts the dose to the malady.” 

“ Of that there can be no doubt,” quoth Captain Ro- 
land. “ I remember a notable instance of the justice of 
what you say. When I was in Spain, both my horse 
and I fell ill at the same time ; a dose was sent for each ; 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


351 


ana, by some infernal mistake, I swallowed the horse’s 
physic, and the horse, poor thing, swallowed mine I” 
*‘And what was the result ? ” asked my father. 

** The horse died ! ” answered Roland mournfully — “ a 
valuable beast — bright bay, with a star 1 ” 

“And you ? ” 

“ Why, the doctor said it ought to have killed me ; but 
it took a great deal more than a paltry bottle of physic 
to kill a man in my regiment.” 

“ Nevertheless, we arrive at the same conclusion,” pur- 
sued my father — “ I with my theory, you with your expe- 
rience — that the physic we take must not be chosen 
haphazard ; and that a mistake in the bottle may kill a 
horse. But when we come to the medicine for the mind, 
how little do we think of the golden rule which common 
sense applies to the body 1 ” 

“Anan,” said the Captain, “ what medicine is there for 
the mind ? Shakspeare has said something on that sub- 
ject, which, if I recollect right, implies that there is no 
ministering to a mind diseased.” 

“ I think not, brother ; he only said physic (meaning 
boluses and black draughts) would not do it. And 
Shakspeare was the last man to find fault with his own 
art ; for, verily, he has been a great physician to the 
mind.” 

“Ah I I take you now, brother — books again I So 
70 U think that, when a man breaks his heart, or loses his 
Fortune, or his daughter — (Blanche, child, come here) — 


352 


THE CAXTONS: 


that you have only to clap a plaster of print on the sort 
place, and all is well. I wish you would find me such 
a cure.” 

**Wili you try it?” 

“ If it is not Greek,” said my uncle. 


CHAPTER Y. 

MY father’s crotchet ON THE HIGEIENTC CHEMISTRY 
OP BOOKS. 

“ Ip,” said my father — and here his hand was deep in 
his waistcoat — “ if we accept the authority of Diodorus, 
as to the inscription on the great Egyptian library — 
and I don’t see why Diodorus should not be as near the 
mark as any one else ? ” added my father interrogatively, 
turning round. 

My mother thought herself the person addressed, and 
nodded her gracious assent to the authority of Diodorus. 
His opinion thus fortified, my father continued — “ If, I 
say, we accept the authority of Diodorus, the inscription 
on the Egyptian library was — ‘ The Medicine of the 
Mini.’ Now, that phrase has become notoriously trite 
and hackneyed, and people repeat vaguely that books 
are the medicine of the mind. Yes ; but to apply the 
medicine is the thing I ” 

“ So you have told us at least twice before, brot.*ier,” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


35S 


qnothed the Captain, bluflBy. “And what Diodorus 
has to do with it, I know no more than the man of 
the moon.” 

“ I shall never get on at this rate,” said my father, in a 
tone between reproach and entreaty. 

Be good children, Roland and Blanche both,” said 
my mother, stopping from her work, and holding up her 
needle threateningly — and indeed inflicting a slight 
pui-cture upon the Captain’s shoulder. 

“ Rem acu tetigisti, my dear,” said my father, borrow- 
ing Cicero’s pun on the occasion.* “And now we shall 
go upon velvet. I say, then, that books, taken indis- 
criminately, are no cure to the diseases and afflictions of 
the mind. There is a world of science necessary in the 
taking them. I have known some people in great sorrow 
fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One 
might as well take a rose-draught for the plague I Light 
reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I 
am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study 
a science that was new to him. Ah 1 Goethe was a 
physician who knew what he was about. In a great 
grief like that, you cannot tickle and divert the mind ; 
you must wrench it away, abstract, absorb — bury it in 
an abyss, hurry it into a labyrinth Therefore, for the 
irremediable sorrows of middle life and old age, I recom- 
mend a strict chronic course of science and hard reason- 


* Cicero’s joke on a senator who was the son of a tailor — ‘ Thoo 
hast touched the thing sharply,” (or with a needle — acw.) 

30* 


X 


354 


THE CAXTONS: 


ing — Counter-irritation. Bring the brain to act upon 
the heart 1 If science is too much against the grain 
(for we have not all got mathematical heads), something 
in the reach of the humblest understanding, but suffi- 
ciently searching to the highest — a new language — 
Greek, Arabic, Scandinavian, Chinese, or Welch ! For 
the loss of fortune, the dose should be applied less 
directly to the understanding. — I would administer some- 
thing elegant and cordial. For as the heart is crushed 
and lacerated by a loss in the affections, so it is rather 
the head that aches and suffers by the loss of money. 
Here we find the higher class of poets a very valuable 
remedy. For observe that poets of the grander and 
more comprehensive, kind of genius have in them two 
separate men, quite distinct from each other — the imagi- 
native man, and the practical, circumstantial man ; and 
it is the happy mixture of these that suits diseases of the 
mind, half imaginative and half practical. There is 
Homer, now lost with the gods, now at home with the 
homeliest, the very ‘ poet of circumstance,’ as Gray has 
finely called him ; and yet with imagination enough to 
seduce and coax the dullest into forgetting, for a while, 
that little spot on his desk which his banker’s book cau 
cover. There is Yirgil, far below him, indeed — 

‘Virgil the wise, 

Whose verse walks highest, but not flies,* 

as Cowley expresses it. But Virgil still has genius 
en:>ugh to be two men — to lead you into the fields, not 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


355 


only to listen to the pastoral reed, and to hear the bees 
hum, but to note how you can make the most of the 
glebe and the vineyard. There is Horace, charming man 
of the world, who will condole with you feelingly on the 
loss of your fortune, and by no means undervalue the 
good things of this life ; but who will yet show you that 
a man may be happy with a vile modicum^ or parm 
rura. There is Shakspeare, who, above all poets, is the 
mysterious dual of hard sense and empyreal fancy — and 
a great many more, whom I need not name ; but who, 
if you take to them gently and quietly, will not, like your 
mere philosopher, your unreasonable stoic, tell you that 
you have lost nothing ; but who will insensibly steal you 
out of this world, with its losses and crosses, and slip 
you into another world, before you know where you are 1 
— a world where you are just as welcome, though you 
carry no more earth of your lost acres with you than 
covers the sole of your shoe. Then, for hypochondria 
and satiety, what is better than a brisk alterative course 
of travels — especially early, out-of-the-way, marvellous, 
legendary travels! How they freshen up the spirits! 
How they take you out of the humdrum yawning state 
you are in ! See, with Herodotus, young Greece spring 
up into life ; or note with him how already the wondrous 
old Orient world is crumbling into giant decay ; or go 
with Carpini and Rubruquis to Tartary, meet ‘ the carts 
of Zagathai laden with houses, and think that a great 
city Is travelling towards you.’* Gaze on that vast wild 


* Rubruquis, sect, xii 


356 


THE caxtonb: 


empire of the Tartar, where the descendants of Jeiignis 
‘multiply and disperse over the immense waste desert, 
which is as boundless as the ocean. ^ Sail with the early 
northern discoverers, and penetrate to the heart of winter, 
among sea-serpents and bears, and tusked morses, with 
the faces of men. Then, what think you of Columbus, 
and the stern soul of Cortes, and the kingdom of Mexico, 
and the strange gold city of the Peruvians, with that 
audacious brute Pizarro ? and the Polynesians, just for 
all the world like the ancient Britons? and the American 
Indians, and the South-sea Islanders ? how petulant, and 
young, and adventurous, and frisky, your hypochondriac 
must get upon a regimen like that I Then, for that vice 
of the mind which I call sectarianism — not in the reli- 
gious sense of the word, but little, narrow prejudices, 
that make you hate your next-door neighbor, because he 
has his eggs roasted when you have yours boiled ; and 
gossiping and prying into people’s affairs, and backbiting, 
and thinking heaven and earth are coming together, if 
some broom touch a cobweb that you have let grow over 
the window-sill of your brains — what like a large and 
generous, mildly aperient (I beg your pardon, my dear) 
course of history I How it clears away all the fumes of 
the head ! — better than the hellebore with which the old 
leeches of the middle ages purged the cerebellum. There, 
amidst all that great whirl and sturmbad (storm -bath), 
as the Germans say, of kingdoms and empires, and races 
and ages, how your mind enlarges beyond that little, 
feverish animosity to John Styles; or that unfortunate 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 357 

prepossession of yours, that all the world is interested in 
your grievances against Tom Stokes and his wife ! 

“I can only touch, you see, on a few ingredients in 
this magnificent pharmacy — its resources are boundless, 
but require the nicest discretion. I remember to have 
cured a disconsolate widower, who obstinately refused 
every other medicament, by a strict course of geology. I 
dipped him deep into gneiss and mica schist. Amidst 
the first strata, I suffered the watery action to expend it- 
self upon cooling crystallised masses ; and, by the time I 
had got him into the tertiary period, amongst the transi- 
tion chalks of Maestricht, and the conchiferous marls of 
Gosau, he was ready for a new wife. Kitty, my dear I it 
is no laughing matter. I made no less notable a cure of 
a young scholar at Cambridge, who was meant for the 
church, when he suddenly caught a cold fit of freethink- 
ing, with great shiverings, from wading out of his depth 
in Spinosa. None of the divines, whom I first tried, did 
him the least good in that state ; so I turned over a new 
leaf, and doctored him gently upon the chapters of faith 
in Abraham Tucker’s book (you should read it, Sisty) ; 
then I threw in strong doses of Fichte ; after that I put 
him on the Scotch metaphysicians, with plunge-baths into 
certain German transcendentalists ; and having convinced 
him that faith is not an unphilosophical state of mind, 
and that he might believe without compromising his un- 
derstanding — for he was mightily conceited on that 
gcore — I threw in my divines, which he was now fit to 
digest ; and his theological constitution, since then, has 


858 


THE CAXTONS: 


be<‘.ome so robust, that he has eaten up two livings and a 
deanery I In fact, I have a plan for a library that, in- 
stead of heading its compartments, ‘ Fliilology, Natural 
Science, Poetry,’ &c., one shall head them according to 
the diseases for which they are severally good, bodily and 
mental — up from a dire calamity, or the pangs of the 
gout, down to a fit of the spleen or a slight catarrh ; for 
which last your light reading comes in with a whey-posset 
and barley-water. But,” continued my father more grave- 
ly, “when some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets 
hold of your mind like a monomania — when you think^ 
because heaven has denied you this or that, on which you 
had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank — 
oh I then diet yourself well on biography — the biography 
of good and great men. See how little a space one sor- 
row really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given 
to some grief similar to your own ; and how triumphantly 
the life sails on beyond it 1 You thought the wing w^as 
broken 1 — Tut — tut — it was only a bruised feather 1 See 
what life leaves behind it when all is done I — a summary of 
positive facts far out of the region of sorrow and suffer- 
ing, linking themselves with the b^^ing of the world. Yes, 
biography is the medicine here 1 Roland, you said you 
would try my prescription — here it is,” — and my father 
took up a book, and reached it to the Captain 

My uncle looked over it — Life of the Uevervnd 
Robert Hall. “ Brother, he was a Dissenter, and, thank 
heaven I I am a church-aiid-state man, to the back- 
bone I ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


359 


Robert Hall was a brave man, and a true soldier 
under the Great Commander,” said my father, artfully. 

The Captain mechanically carried his forefinger to his 
forehead in military fashion, and, saluted the book re- 
spectfully. 

“I have another copy for you, Pisistratus — that is 
mine which I have lent Roland. This, which I bought 
for you to-day, you will keep.” 

“ Thank you, sir,” said I, listlessly, not seeing what 
great good the Life of Robert Hall could do me, or why 
the same medicine should suit the old weather-beaten 
uncle, and the nephew yet in his teens. 

“I have said nothing,” resumed my father, slightly 
bowing his broad temples, “of the Book of Books, for 
that is the lignum vitce, the cardinal medicine for all. 
These are but the subsidiaries : for, as you may remem- 
ber, my dear Kitty, that I have said before — we can 
never keep the system quite right unless we place just in 
the centre of the great ganglionic system, whence the 
nerves carry its influence gently and smoothly through the 
w hole frame — the Saffron Bag 1 ” 



360 


THE CAXTONS: 


CHAPTER VI. 

After breakfast the next morning, I took my hat to 
go out, when my father, looking at me, and seeing by my 
countenance that I had not slept, said gently — 

“ My dear Pisistratus, you have not tried my medicine 
yet.” 

“What medicine, sir?” 

“Robert Hall.” 

“No, indeed, not yet,” said I, smiling. 

“ Do so, my son, before you go out ; depend on it, you 
will enjoy your walk more.” 

I confess that it was with some reluctance 1 obeyed. 
I went back to my own room, and sate resolutely down 
to my task. Are there any of you, my readers, who have 
not read the Life of Robert Hall ? If so, in the words 
of the great Captain Cuttle, “When found, make a note 
of it.” Never mind what your theological opinion is — 
Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Paedobaptist, Inde- 
pendent, Quaker, Unitarian, Philosopher, Freethinker, — 
send for Robert Halil Yea, if there exist yet^on earth 
descendants of the arch-heresies, which made such a noise 
in their day — men who believe with Saturninus that the 
world was made by seven angels ; or with Basiliaes, that 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 3^1 

there are as many heavens as there are days in the year ; 
or with the Nicolaitanes, that men ought to have their 
wives in common (plenty of that sect still, especially in 
the Red Republic) ; or with their successors, the Guos- 
tics, w^ho believed in Jaldaboath ; or with the Carpacra« 
tians, that the world was made by the devil ; or with thtr 
Cerinthians, and Ebionites, and Nazarites (wdiich last 
discovered that the name of Noah’s wife was Ouria, and 
that she set the ark on fire) ; or with the Yalentinians, 
who taught that there were thirty -^ones, ages, or worlds, 
born out of Profundity (Bathos), male, and Silence, 
female ; or with the Marcites, Colarbasii, and Heracleo- 
nites (who still kept up that bother about ^ones, Mr. 
Profundity and Mrs. Silence) ; or with the Ophites, who 
are said to have worshipped the serpent ; or the Cainites, 
who ingeniously found out a reason for honoring Judas, 
because he foresaw what good would come to men by be- 
traying our Savior ; or with the Sethites, who made Seth 
a part of the divine substance ; or with the Archonticks, 
Ascothyptae, Cerdonians, Marcionites, the disciples of 
Apelles, and Severus, (the last was a teetotaller, and said 
wine was begot by Satan I) or of Tatian, who thought all 
the descendants of Adam were irretrievably damned ex- 
cept themselves (some of those Tatiani are certainly 
extant I) or the Cataphrygians, who were also called 
Tascodragitae, because they thrust their forefingers up 
their nostrils to show their devotion ; or the Pepuzians, 
Quintilians, and Artotyrites ; or — but no matter. If I 
go through all the follies of men in search of the truth, 1 
I. — 31 


362 


THE CAXTONS: 


shall never get to the end of my chapter, or back to 
Robert Hall : whatever, then, thou art, orthodox or 
heterodox, send for the Life of Bohert Hall. It is the 
life of a man that it does good to manhood itself to 
contemplate. 

I had finished the biography, which is not long, and 
was musing over it, when I heard the Captain’s cork-leg 
upon the stairs. I opened the door for him, and he 
entered, book in hand, as I, also, book in hand, stood 
ready to receive him. 

“Well, sir,” said Roland, seating himself, “has the 
prescription done you any good ? ” 

“Yes, uncle — great.” 

“ And me too. By Jupiter, Sisty, that same Hall was 
a fine fellow ! I wonder if the medicine has gone through 
the same channels in both? Tell me, first, how it has 
affected you.” 

“ Imprimis, then, my dear uncle, I fancy that a book 
like this must do good to all who live in the world in the 
ordinary manner, by admitting us into a circle of life of 
which I suspect we think but little. Here is a man con- 
necting himself directly with a heavenly purpose, and 
cultivating considerable faculties to. that one end ; seeking 
to accomplish his soul as far as he can, that he may do 
most good on earth, and take a higher existence up to 
heaven ; a man intent upon a sublime and spiritual duty ; 
in short, living as it were in it, and so filled with the con- 
sciousness of immortality, and so strong in the link be- 
tween God and man, that, without any affected stoicism, 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


363 


without being insensible to pain — rather, perhaps, from 
a nervous temperament, acutely feeling it — he yet has a 
happiness wholly independent of it. It is impossible not 
to be thrilled with an ‘admiration that elevates while it 
awes you, in reading that solemn ‘ Dedication of himself 
to God.^ This offering of ‘soul and body, time, health, 
reputation, talents,’ to the divine and invisible Principle 
of Good, calls us suddenly to contemplate the selfishness 
of our own view and hopes, and awakens us from the 
egotism that exacts all and resigns nothing. 

“ But this book has mostly struck upon the chord in 
my own heart, in that characteristic which my father in- 
dicated as belonging to all biography. Here is a life of 
remarkable fulness, great study, great thought, and 
great action; and yet,” said I, coloring, “how small a 
place those feelings, which have tyrannised over me, and 
made all else seem black and void, hold in that life. It 
is not as if the man were a cold and hard ascetic ; it is 
easy to see in him not only remarkable tenderness and 
warm affections, but strong self-will, and the passion of 
all vigorous natures. Yes ; I understand better now 
what existence in a true man should be.” 

“All that is very well said,” quoth the Captain, “but 
it did not strike me. What I have seen in this book is 
courage. Here is a poor creature rolling oh the carpet 
with agony ; from childhood to death tortured by a mys- 
terious incurable malady — a malady that is described as 
‘ an internal apparatus of torture ; ’ and who does by his 
heroism, more than hear it — he puts it cut of power to 


364 


THE CAXTONS: 


affect liim ; and though (here is the passage) ‘ his appoint- 
ment by day and by night was incessant pain, yet high 
enjoyment was, notwithstanding, the law of his existence.’ 
Robert Hall reads me a lesson — me, an old soldier, who 
thought myself above taking lessons — in courage, at 
least. And, as I came to that passage when, in the shaip 
paroxysms before death, he says, ‘ I have not complained, 
have I, sir ? — and I won’t complain I ’ — when I came to 
that passage I started up, and cried, ‘ Roland de Caxton, 
thou hast been a coward I and, an thou hadst had thy 
deserts, thou hadst been cashiered, broken, and drummed 
out of the regiment long ago I 

“After all, then, my father was not so wrong — he 
placed his guns right, and fired a good shot.” 

“ He must have been from 6° to 9° above the crest of 
the parapet,” said my uncle, thoughtfully — “which, I 
take it, is the best elevation, both for shot and shells, in 
enfilading a work.” 

“ What say you, then. Captain ? — up with our knap- 
sacks, and on with the march I ” 

“ Right about — face I ” cried my uncle, as erect as a 
column. 

“No looking back, if we can help it.” 

“Full in the front of the enemy. ‘IJp, guards, and 
at ’em I ’ ” 

“ ‘ England expects every man to do his duty I 

“ Cypress or laurel I ” cried my uncle, waving the bocs 
over his head. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


365 


CHAPTER YII. 

I WENT out — and to see Francis Vivian ; for, on leaving 
Mr. Trevanion, I was not without anxiety for my new 
friend’s future provision. But Vivian was from home, 
and I strolled from his lodgings into the suburbs on the 
other side of the river, and began to meditate seriously on 
the best course now to pursue. In quitting my present 
occupations, I resigned prospects far more brilliant, and 
fortunes far more rapid, than I could ever hope to realize 
in any other entrance into life. But I felt the necessity, 
if I desired to keep steadfast to that more healthful frame 
of mind I had obtained, of some manly and continuous 
labor — some earnest employment. My thoughts flew 
back to the university; and the quiet of its cloisters, 
which, until I had been blinded by the glare of the London 
world, and grief had somewhat dulled the edge of ray 
quick desires and hopes, had seemed to me cheerless and 
unaltering — took an inviting aspect. It presented what 
I needed most — a new scene, a new arena, a partial re* 
turn into boyhood ; repose for passions prematurely 
raised ; activity for the reasoning powers in fresh di- 
rections. I had not lost my time in London : I had kept 
np, if not studies purely classical, at least the habits of 
application ; I had sharpened my general comprehension, 
31 * 


866 


THE CAXTONS; 


and augiuented my resources. Accordingly, when I re- 
turned home, I resolved to speak to my father. But I 
found he had forestalled me ; and, on entering, my mother 
drew me upstairs into her room, with a smile kindled 
by my smile, and told me that she and her Austin had 
bsen thinking that it was best that I should leave London 
as soon as possible ; that my father found he could now 
dispense with the library of the Museum for some months ; 
that the time for which they had taken their lodgings 
would be up in a few days ; that the summer was far ad- 
vanced, town odious, the country beautiful — in a word, 
we were to go home. There I could prepare myself foi 
Cambridge, till the long vacation was over; and, my 
mother added hesitatingly, and with a prefatory caution 
to spare my health, that my father, whose income could 
ill afford the requisite allowance to me, counted on my 
soon lightening his burden, by getting a scholarship. I 
felt how much provident kindness there was in all this — 
even in that hint of a scholarship, which was meant to 
rouse my faculties, and spur me, by affectionate incentives, 
to a new ambition. I was not less delighted than grate- 
ful. 

^ But poor Roland,” said I, “and little Blanche — will 
they come with us ? ” 

“ I fear not,” said my mother, “ for Roland is anxious 
to get back to his tower ; and in a day or two, he will be 
well enough to move.” 

“ I)o you not think, my dear mother, that, somehow or 
Dther, this lost son of his had something to do with Ro 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


367 


land^s illness — that the illness was as much mental as 
physi(?al ? 

“ I have no doubt of it, Sisty. What a sad, bad heart 
that young man must have I ” 

My uncle seems to have abandoned all hope of finding 
him in London ; otherwise, ill as he has been, I am sure 
we could not have kept him at home. So he goes back 
to the old tower. Poor man, he must be dull enough 
there I We must contrive to pay him a visit. Does 
Blanche ever speak of her brother I ” 

“ No ; for it seems they were not brought up much to- 
gether — at all events, she does not remember him. How 
lovely she is ! Her mother must surely have been very 
handsome.’’ 

“ She is a pretty child, certainly, though in a strange 
style of beauty — such immense eyes I — and affectionate, 
and loves Roland as she ought.” 

And here the conversation dropped. 

Our plans being thus decided, it was necessary that I 
should lose no time in seeing Vivian, and making some 
arrangement for the future. His manner had lost so much 
of its abruptness, that I thought I could venture to re- 
commend him personally to Trevanion ; and I knew, after 
what had passed, that Trevanion would make a point so 
oblige me. I resolved to consult my father about it. As 
yet, I had either never found, or never made the oppor- 
tunity to talk to my father on the subject, he had been so 
occupied ; and, if he had proposed to see my new friend, 
what answer could I have made, in the teeth of Vivian’s 


868 


THE CAXTONS: 


cynic objections ? However, as we were now going away^ 
that last consideration ceased to be of importance ; and, 
for the first, the student had not yet entirely settled back 
to his books. I therefore watched the time when my 
father walked down to the Museum, and, slipping my arm 
in his, I told him, briefly and rapidly, as we went along, 
how I had formed this strange acquaintance, and how 1 
was now situated. The story did not interest my father 
quite so much as I expected, and he did not understand 
all the complexities of Vivian’s character — how could he ? 
for he answered briefly, “ I should think that, for a young 
man, apparently without a sixpence, and whose education 
seems so imperfect, any resource in Trevanion must be 
most temporary and uncertain. Speak to your Uncle 
Jack — he can find him some place, I have no doubt — 
perhaps a readership in a printer’s office, or a reporter’s 
place on some journal, if he is fit for it. But if you want 
to steady him, let it be something regular.” 

Therewith my father dismissed the matter, and vanished 
through the gates of the Museum. Readership to a 
printer — reportership on a journal — for a young gen- 
tleman with the high notions and arrogant vanity of 
Francis Vivian — his ambition already soaring far beyond 
kid gloves and a cabriolet 1 The idea was hopeless ; and, 
perplexed and doubtful, I took my way to Vivian’s 
lodgings. I found him at home, and unemployed, stand- 
ing by his window, with folded arms, and in a state of 
such reverie that he was not aware of my entrance till I 
had touched him on the shoulder. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


Ila ! ” said he then, with one of his short, quick, im- 
patient sighs, “ I thought you had given me up, and for- 
gotten me — but you look pale and harassed. I could 
almost think you had grown thinner within the last few 
days.” 

“ Oh I never mind me, Yivian : I have come to speak 
of yourself. I have left Trevanion ; it is settled that I 
should go to the university — and we all quit town in a 
few days.” 

^‘In a few days I — all 1— who are ail?” 

“My family — father, mother, uncle, cousin, and my- 
self. But, my dear fellow, now let us think seriously 
what is best to be done for you. I can present you to 
Trevanion.” 

“ Ha I ” 

“ But Trevanion is a hard, though an excellent man j 
and, moreover, as he is always changing the subjects that 
engross him, in a month or so he may have nothing to 
give you. You said you would work — will you consent 
not to complain if the work cannot be done in kid gloves ? 
Young men who have risen high in the world have begun, 
it is well known, as reporters to the press. It is a 
situation of respectability, and in request, and not easy to 
obtain, I fancy ; but still — ” 

Vivian interrupted me hastily — 

“ Thank you a thousand times ! but what you say con- 
firms a resolution I had taken before you came. I shall 
make it up^with my family, and return home.” 

“ Oh ! I am so really glad. How wise in you ! ” 

Y 


m 


THE OAXTONS: 


Tiviau turned away his head abruptly — 

“Your pictures of family life and domestic peace, you 
see,” he said, “seduced me more than you thought. — 
When do you leave town ? ” 

“Why, I believe, early next week.” 

‘ ■ So soon,” said Vivian, thoughtfully. “ Well, perhaps 
I may ask you yet to introduce me to Mr. Trevanion ; 
for — who knows ? — my family and I may fall out again. 
But I will consider. I think I have heard you say that 
this Trevanion is a very old friend of your father’s or 
uncle’s ? ” 

“ He, or rather Lady Ellinor, is an old friend of both.” 

“And therefore would listen to your recommendations 
of me. But perhaps I may not need them. So you 
have left — left of your own accord — a situation that 
seemed more enjoyable, I should think, than rooms in a 
college ; — left — why did you leave ? ” 

And Vivian fixed his bright eyes full and piercingly on 
mine. 

“ It was only for a time, for a trial, that I was there,” 
said I, evasively ; “ out at nurse, as it were, till the Alma 
Mater opened her arms — alma indeed she ought to be 
to my father’s son.” 

Vivian looked unsatisfied with my explanation, but 
did not question me farther. He himself was the first to 
turn the conversation, and he did this with more 
affectionate cordiality than was common to him. Hi 
inquired into our general plans, into the probabilities of 
our return to town, and drew from me a description of 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


311 


our rural Tusculum. He was quiet and subdued ; and 
once or twice I thought there was a moisture in those 
luminous eyes. We parted with more of the unreserve 
and fondness of youthful friendship — at least on my part, 
and seemingly on his — than had yet endeared our 
singular intimacy ; for the cement of cordial attachment 
had been wanting to an intercourse in which one party 
refused all confidence, and the other mingled distrust and 
fear with keen interest and compassionate admiration. 

That evening, before lights were brought in, my father, 
turning to me, abruptly asked if I had seen my friend, 
and what he was about to do. 

“ He thinks of returning to his family,” said T. 
Roland, who had seemed dozing, winced uneasily. 

“ Who returns to his family ? ” asked the Captain. 

“ Why, you must know,” said my father, ‘‘ that Sisty 
has fished up a friend of whom he can give no account 
that would satisfy a policeman, and whose fortunes he 
thinks himself under the necessity of protecting. You 
are very lucky that he has not picked your pockets, Sisty ; 
but I dare say he has I What’s his name ? ” 

“Vivian,” said I — “ Francis Vivian.” 

“A good name, and a Cornish,” said my father. 
“ Some derive it from the Romans — Vivianus ; others 
from a Celtic word, which means” — 

“ Vivian I ” interrupted Roland — “ Vivian 1 — I wonder 
if it be the son of Colonel Vivian ? ” 

“ He is certainly o gentleman’s son,” said I ; “ but he 
never told me what his family and connexions were.” 


37J 


THE CAXTONS. 


Viviau,” repeated my uncle — “ poor Colonel Vivian I 
So 4/lie young man is going to his father. I have no 
doubt it is the same. Ah I ” — 

“What do you know of Colonel Vivian, or his son 
said I “ Pray, te.ll me ; I am so interested in this youug 
man.” 

“ I know nothing of either, except by gossip,” said 
my uncle, moodily. “ I did hear that Colonel Vivian, an 
excellent officer and honorable man, had been in — in — 
(Roland’s voice faltered) — in great grief about his son, 
whom, a mere boy, he had prevented from some improper 
marriage, and who had run away and left him — it was 
supposed for America. The story affected me at the 
time,” added my uncle, trying to speak calmly. 

We were all silent, for we felt why Roland was so dis- 
turbed, and why Colonel Vivian’s grief should have 
touched him home. Similarity in affliction makes us 
brothers even to the unknown. 

“You say he is going home to his family — I am 
heartily glad of it ! ” said the envying old soldier, 
gallantly. 

The lights came in then, and two minutes after. Uncle 
Roland and I were nestled close to each other, side by 
side ; and I was reading over his shoulder, and his finger 
was silently resting on that passage that, had so struck 
him — “I have not complained — have I, sir? — and 1 
won’t complain 1 ” 


PART TENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

My uncle’s conjecture as to the parentage of Fra.ccis 
Vivian seemed to me a positive discovery. Nothing 
more likely than that this wilful boy had formed some 
headstrong attachment which no father would sanction, 
and so, thwarted and irritated, thrown himself on the 
world. Such an explanation was the more agreeable to 
me, as it cleared up much that had appeared discreditable 
in the mystery that surrounded Vivian. I could never 
bear to think that he had done anything mean and 
criminal, however I might believe he had been rash and 
faulty. It was natural that the unfriended wanderer 
should have been thrown into a society, the equivocal 
character of which had failed to revolt the audacity of 
an inquisitive mind and adventurous temper ; but it was 
natural also, that the habits of gentle birth, and that 
silent education which English gentlemen commonly re- 
ceive from their very cradle, should have preserved his 
honor, at least, intact through all. Certainly the pride, 

I. — 32 (373) . 


374 


THE C A X T U N S : 


the notions, the very faults of the well-born had remained 
in full force — why not the better qualities, however 
smothered for the time ? I felt thankful for the thought 
that Yivian was returning to an element in which he 
might repurify his mind — refit himself for that sphere to 
which he belonged ; — thankful that we might yet meet, 
and our present half-intimacy mature, perhaps, into 
healthful friendship. 

It was with such thoughts that I took up my hat the 
next morning to seek Yivian, and judge if we had gained 
the right clue, when we were startled by what was a rare 
sound at our door — the postman’s knock. My father 
was at the Museum ; my mother in high conference, or 
close preparation for our approaching departure, with 
Mrs. Primmins ; Roland, I, and Blanche, had the room 
to ourselves. 

*‘The letter is not for me,” said Pisistratus. 

*‘Nor for me, I am sure,” said the Captain, when the 
servant entered and confuted him — for the letter was 
for him. He took it up wonderingly and suspiciously, 
as Glumdalclitch took up Gulliver, or as (if naturalists) 
we take up an unknown creature, that we are not quite 
sure will not bite and sting us. Ah I it has stung or bit 
you, Captain Roland 1 for you start and change color — 
you suppress a cry as you break the seal — you breathe 
hard as- you read — and the letter seems short — but it 
takes time in the reading, for you go over it again and 
again. Then you fold it up — crumple it — thrust it 
into your breast-pocket — and look round like a man 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


376 


waking from a dream. Is it a dream of pain or of 
pleasure? Yerily, I cannot guess, for nothing is on that 
eagle face either of pain or pleasure, but rather of fear, 
agitation, bewilderment. Yet the eyes are bright, too, 
and there is a smile on that iron lip. 

My uncle looked round, I say, and called hastily for his 
cane and his hat, and then began buttoning his coat across 
liis broad breast, though the day was hot enough to have 
unbuttoned every breast in the metropolis. 

“ You are not going out, uncle ? ” 

“Yes, yes.’^ 

“ But are you strong enough yet ? Let me go with 
you.” 

“No, sir; no. Blanche, come here.” He took the 
child in his arms, surveyed her wistfully, and kissed her. 
“You have never given me pain, Blanche : say, ‘ God 
bless and prosper you, father I ’ ” 

“ God bless and prosper my dear, dear papa ! ” said 
Blanche, putting her little hands together, as if in 
prayer. 

“There — that should bring me luck, Blanche,” said 
the Captain, gaily, and setting her down. Then seizing 
his cane from the servant, and putting on his hat with a 
determined air, he walked stoutly forth ; and I saw him, 
from the window, march along the streets as cheerfully as 
if he had been besieging Badajoz. 

“ God prosper thee, too 1 ” said I, involuntarily. 

And Blanche took hold of my hand, and said in her 
prettiest way (and her pretty ways were many), “ I wish 


376 


THE CAXTONS: 


you would come with us, cousin Sisty, and help me to love 
papa. Poor papa I he wants us both — he wants all the 
love we can give him I ” 

“ That he does, my dear Blanche ; and I think it a 
great mistake that we don’t all live together. Your papa 
ought not to go to that tower of his at the world’s end, 
but come to our sung, pretty house, with a garden full 
of flowers, for you to be Queen of the May — from 
May to November ; to say nothing of a duck that is more 
sagacious than any creature in the Fables I gave you "the 
other day. ” 

Blanche laughed and clapped her hands — “Oh, that 
would be so nice ! But,” — and she stopped gravely, and 
added, “ but then, you see, there would not be the tower to 
love papa ; and I am sure that the tower must love him 
very much, for. he loves it dearly.” 

It was my turn to laugh now. “ I see how it is, you 
little witch 1 ” said I ; “ you would coax us to come and 
live with you and the owls I With all my heart, so far 
as I am concerned.” 

“ Sisty,” said Blanche, with an appalling solemnity on 
her face, “ do you know what I’ve been thinking ? ” 

“Not I, miss — what? — something very deep, I can 
sec^ — very horrible, indeed, I fear — you look so serious.” 

“ Why, I’ve been thinking,” continued Blanche, not re- 
laxing a muscle, and without the least bit of a blush — 
“ I’ve been thinking that I’ll be your little wife ; and then 
of course we shall all live together.” 

Blanche did not blush, but I did. “ Ask me that tec 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


377 


years hence, if you dare, you impudent little thing ; and 
now, run away to Mrs. Primmins, and tell her to keep 
you out of mischief, for I must say ‘good morning. ’’’ 

But Blanche did not run away, and her dignity seemed 
exceedingly hurt at my mode of taking her alarming pro- 
position, for she retired into a corner pouting, and sat 
down with great majesty. So there I left her, and went 
my way to Yivian. He was out ; but, seeing books on 
his table, and having nothing to do, I resolved to wait for 
his return. I had enough of my father in me to turn at 
once to the books for company ; and, by the side of some 
graver works which I had recommended, I found certain 
novels in French, that Yivian had got from a circulating 
library. I had a curiosity to read these — for, except the 
old classic novels of France, this mighty branch of its 
popular literature was new to me. I soon got interested, 
but what an interest I — the interest that a nightmare 
might excite, if one caught it out of one’s sleep, and set to 
work to examine it. By the side of what dazzling shrewd- 
ness, what deep knowledge of those holes and corners in 
the human system, of which Goethe must have spoken 
when he said somewhere — (if I recollect right, and don’t 
misquote him, which I’ll not answer for) — “ There is 
something in every man’s heart which, if we could know, 
would make us hate him,” — by the side of all this, and 
of much more that showed prodigious boldness and energy 
of intellect, what strange exaggeration — what mock no- 
bility of sentiment — what inconceivable perversion of 
reasoning — what damnable demoralization I The true 
32 * 


578 


THE CAXTONS: 


artist, whether in Romance or the Drama, will often ne- 
cessarily interest us in a vicious or criminal character — 
but he does not the less leave clear to our reprobation the 
vice or the crime. But here I found myself called upon 
not only to feel the interest in the villain (which would be 
perfectly allowable, — I am very much interested in Mac- 
beth and Lovelace,) — but to admire and sympathise with 
the villany itself. Nor was it the confusion of all wrong 
and right in individual character that shocked me the 
most — but rather the view of society altogether, painted 
in colors so hideous that, if true, instead of a revolution, 
it would draw down a deluge ; — it was the hatred, care- 
fully instilled, of the poor against the rich — it was the 
war breathed between class and class — it was that envy 
of all superiorities, which loves to show itself by allowing 
virtue only to a blouse, and asserting that a man must be 
a rogue if he belong to that rank of society in which, from 
the very gifts of education, from the necessary associations 
of circumstance, roguery is the last thing probable or 
natural. It was all this, and things a thousand times 
worse, that set my head in a whirl, as hour after hour 
slipped on, and I still gazed, spell-bound, on these Chi- 
meras and Typhous — these symbols of the Destroying 
Principle. “ Poor Vivian ! ” said I, as I rose, at last, “ if 
thou readest these books with pleasure, or from habit, no 
wonder that thou seemest to me so obtuse about right and 
wrong, and to have a great cavity where thy brain should 
have the bump of ‘ conscientiousness’ in full salience I ” 
Nevertheless, to do those demoniacs justice, I had got 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


379 


through time imperceptibly by their pestilent help ; and I 
was startled to see, by my watch, how late it was. I had 
just resolved to leave a line fixing an appointment for the 
morrow, and so depart, when I heard Yivian’s knock — a 
knock that had great character in it — haughty, impatient, 
irregular ; not a neat, symmetrical, harmonious, unpre- 
tending knock, but a knock that seemed to set the whole 
house and street at defiance : it was a knock bullying — a 
knock ostentatious — a knock irritating and offensive — 
“impiger,” and “iracundus.” 

But the step that came up the stairs did not suit the 
knock I it was a step light, yet firm — slow, yet elastic. 

The maid-servant who had opened the door had, no 
doubt, informed Yivian of my visit, for he did not seem 
surprised to see me ; but he cast that hurried suspicious 
look round the room which a man is apt to cast when he 
has left his papers about, and finds some idler, on whose 
trustworthiness he by no means depends, seated in the 
midst of the unguarded secrets. The look was not flat- 
tering ; but my conscience was so unreproachful that I 
laid all the blame upon the general suspiciousness of 
Yivian’s character. 

“ Three hours, at least, have I been here I ” said I, 
maliciously. 

“ Three hours I ” — again the look. 

And this is the worst secret I have discovered,’’-— 
and I pointed to those literary Manicheans. 

“ Oh I ” said he, carelessly, “ French novels 1 — I don’t 
wonder you stayed so long. I can’t read your English 


V 


3S0 


THE CAXTONS: 


novels — flat and insipid : there are truth and life 
here. ” 

“ Truth and life I ” cried I, every hair on my head 
erect with astonishment — “then hurrah for falsehood and 
death I ” 

“ They don’t please you ; no accounting for tastes.” 

“ I beg your pardon — I account for yours, if you really 
take for truth and life monsters so nefast and flagitious. 
For heaven’s sake, my dear fellow, don’t suppose that any 
man could get on in England — get anywhere but to the 
Old Bailey or Norfolk Island, if he squared his conduct 
to such topsy-turvy notions of the world as I find here.” 

“ How many years are you my senior,” asked Vivian, 
sneeringly, “ that you should play the mentor, and correct 
my ignorance of the world ? ” 

“ Vivian, it is not age and experience that speak here, 
it is something far wiser than they — the instinct of a mar ' 
heart, and a gentleman’s honor.” 

“Well, well,” said Vivian, rather discomposed, “let 
the poor books alone : you know my creed — that books 
.nfluence us little one way or the other.” 

“ By the great Egyptian library, and the soul of Diodo- 
rus I I wish you could hear my father upon that point. 
Come,” added I, with sublime compassion — “come, it is 
not too late — do let me introduce you to my father. I 
will consent to read French novels all my life, if a single 
chat with Austin Caxton does not send you home with a 
happier face and a lighter heart. Come, let me take you 
back to dine with us to-day.” 


/ 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


381 


“I cannot,” said Vivian, with some confusion — “1 
cannot, for this day I leave London. Some other time 
perhaps — for,” he added, but not heartily, we may meet 
again.” 

“ I hope so,” said I, wringing his hands, “ and that is 
likely, — since in ^pite of yourself, I have guessed youi 
secret — your birth and parentage.” 

“ How I ” cried Vivian, turning pale, and gnawing his 
lip — “ what do you mean ? — speak.” 

“Well, then, are you not the lost, runaway son of 
Colonel Vivian. ? Come, say the truth ; let us be confi- 
dants.” 

Vivian threw off a succession of his abrupt sighs ; and 
then, seating himself, leant his face on the table, confused, 
no doubt, to find himself discovered. 

“You are near the mark,” said he, at last, “buj do not 
ask me farther yet. Some day,” he cried impetuously, 
and springing suddenly to his feet — “some day you shall 
know all : yes ; some day, if I live, when that name sliall 
be high in the world : yes, when the world is at my feet ! ’* 
He stretched his right hand as if to grasp the space, and 
his whole face was lighted with a fierce enthusiasm. The 
glow died away, and with a slight return of his scornful 
smile, he said — “ Dreams yet ; dreams I And now, look 
at this paper.” And he drew out a memorandum scrawled 
over with figures. 

“ This, I think, is my pecuniary debt to you ; in a few 
days, I shall discharge it. Give me your address.” 

“ Oh ! ” said T, pained, “can you speak to me of money, 
Vivian ? ” 


382 


THE CAXTONS: 


‘‘ It is one of those instincts of honor you cite so often,” 
answered he, coloring. “Pardon me.” 

“ That is my address,” said I, stooping to write, in 
order to conceal my wounded feelings. “ You will avail 
yourself of it, I hope, often, and tell me that you are well 
and happy.” 

“When I am happy you shall know.” 

“ You do not require any introduction to Trevanion ? ” 

Yivian hesitated. “No, I think not. If ever I do, 
I will write for it.” 

I took up my hat, and was about to go — for I was 
still chilled and mortified — when, as if by an irresistible 
impulse, Vivian came to me hastily, flung his arms round 
my neck, and kissed me as a boy kisses his brother. 

“Bear with me I ” he cried in a faltering voice : “I did 
not think to love any one as you have made me love you, 
though sadly against the grain. If you are not my good 
angel, it is that nature and habit are too strong for you. 
Certainly, some day we shall meet again. I shall have 
time, in the meanwhile, to see if the world can be indeed 
‘mine oyster, which I with sword can opc?' ’ I would 
be aut Geesar aut nullusf Very little other Latin know 
I to quote from ! If Caesar, men will forgive me all the 
means to the end ; if nullus, London has a river, and in 
every street one may buy a cord ! ” 

“ Yivian I Yivian I ” 

“ Now go, my dear friend, while my heart is s<^ftcncd 
— go, before I shock you with some return of tl e native 
Adam. Go — go!” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


383 


And taking me gently by the arm. Francis Vivian 
drew me from the room, and re-entering, locked his door. 

Ah ! if I could have left him Robert Hall, instead of 
those execrable Typhons 1 But would that medicine have 
suited his case, or must grim Experience write sterner 
prescriptions with an iron hand ? 


CHAPTER II. 

When I got back, just in time for dinner, Roland had 
not returned, nor did he return till late in the evening. 
All our eyes were directed towards him, as we rose with 
one accord to give him welcome ; but his face was like a 
mask — it was locked, and rigid, and unreadable. 

Shutting the door carefully after him, he came to the 
hearth, stood on it, upright and calm, for a few moments, 
and then asked — 

“ Has Blanche gone to bed ? ’’ 

“ Yes,” said my mother, ‘‘but not to sleep, I am sure ; 
she made me promise to tell her when you came back.” 

Roland’s brow relaxed. 

“ To-morrow, sister,” said he, slowly, “ will you see 
^hat she has the proper mourning made for her? My 
son is dead.” 

“ Dead I ” we cried with one voice, and surrounding 
him with one impulse. 

“ Dead ! impossible — you could not say it so calmly 


384 


THE CAXTONS: 


Dead— how do you know ? You may be deceived. Who 
told you ? — why do you think so ? ” 

“ I have seen his remains,” said my uncle, with the 
same gloomy calm. “We will all mourn for him. Pisis- 
tratus, you are heir to my name now, as to your father^s. 
Go od- night ; excuse me, all — all you dear and kind 
ones; I am worn out.” 

Poland lighted his candle and went away, leaving us 
thunderstruck; but he came back again — looked round 
— took up his book, open in the favorite passage — 
nodded again, and again vanished. We looked at each 
other as if we had seen a ghost. Then my father rose 
and went out of the room, and remained in Roland’s 
till the night was well-nigh gone I We sat up — my 
mother and I — till he returned. His benign face looked 
profoundly sad. 

“ How is it, sir ? Can you tell us more ? ” 

My father shook his head. 

“ Roland prays that you may preserve the same for- 
bearance you have shown hitherto, and never mention his 
son’s name to him. Peace be to the living, as to the 
dead. Kitty, this changes our plans ; we must all go to 
Cumberland — we cannot leave Roland thus I ” 

“ Poor, poor Roland I ” said my mother, through her 
tears. “And to think that father and son were not 
reconciled. But Roland forgives him now — oh, yes ; 
now ! ” 

“It is not Roland we can censure,” said my father, 
almost fiercely ; “it is but enough. We must hurry 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


385 


out of town as soon as we can : Roland will recover in 
the native air of his old ruins.” 

We went up to bed mournfully. “And so,” thought I, 
“ends one grand object of my life I — I had hoped to 
have brought those two together. But, alas 1 what 
peacemaker like the grave I ” 


CHAPTER III. 

My uncle did not leave his room for three days, but he 
was much closeted with a lawyer ; and my father dropped 
some words which seemed to imply that the deceased had 
incurred debts, and that the poor Captain was making 
some charge on his small property. As Roland had said 
that he had seen the remains of his son, I took it, at first, 
for granted that we should attend a funeral ; but no word 
of this was said. On the fourth day, Roland, in deep 
mourning, entered a hackney-coach with the lawyer, and 
was absent about two hours. I did not doubt that he 
had thus quietly fulfilled the last mournful offices. On 
his return, he shut himself up again for the rest of the 
day, and would not see even my father. But the next 
mcniing he made his appearance as usual, and I even 
thought that he seemed more cheerful than I had yet 
known him — whether he played a part, or whether the 
worst was now over, and the grave was less cruel than 

L — 33 


z 


386 


THE CAXTONS: 


uncertainty. On the following day, we all set out for 
Cumberland. 

[n the interval, Uncle Jack had been almost constantly 
at the house, and, to do him justice, he had seemed un- 
affectedly shocked at the calamity that had befallen 
Roland. There was, indeed, no want of heart in Uncle 
Jack, whenever you went straight at it ; but it was hard 
to find if you took a circuitous route towards it througn 
the pockets. The worthy speculator had indeed much 
business to transact with my father before he left town. 
The Anti- Publisher Society had been set up, and it was 
through the obstetric aid of that fraternity that the Great 
Book was to be ushered into the world. The new 
journal, the Literary Times, was also far advanced — 
not yet out, but my father was fairly in for it. There 
were preparations for its debut on a vast scale, and two 
or three gentlemen in black — one of whom looked like a 
lawyer, and another like a printer, and a third uncom- 
monly like a Jew — called twice, with papers of a very 
formidable aspect. All these preliminaries settled, the 
last thing I heard Uncle Jack say, with a slap on my 
father’s back, was, “ Fame and fortune both made now 1 
— you may go to sleep in safety, for you leave me wide 
awake. Jack Tibbcts never sleeps ! ” 

I had thought it strange that, since my abrupt exodus 
from Trevanion’s house, no notice had been taken of any 
of us by himself or Lady Ellin or. But on the very eve 
of our departure, came a kind note from Trevanion to 
me, dated from his favorite country-seat (accompanied 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


381 


by a present of some rare books to my father,) in which 
he said briefly that there had been illness in his family, 
which had obliged him to leave town for a change of air, 
but that Lady Ellinor expected to call on my mother the 
next week. He had found amongst his books some 
curious works of the Middle Ages, amongst others a 
complete set of Cardan, which he knew my father would 
like to have, and so sent them. There was no allusion 
to what had passed between us. 

In reply to this note, after due thanks on my father’s 
part, who seized upon the Cardan (Lyons edition, 1663, 
ten volumes folio) as a silk-worm does upon a mulberry- 
leaf, I expressed our joint regrets that there was no hope 
of our seeing Lady Ellinor, as we were just leaving town. 
I should have added something on the loss my uncle had 
sustained, but my father thought that, since Roland shrank 
from any mention of his son, even by his nearest kindred, 
it would be his obvious wish not to parade his affliction 
beyond that circle. 

And there has been illness in Trevanion’s family I On 
whom had it fallen ? I could not rest satisfied with that 
general expression, and I took my answer myself to Tre- 
vanion’s house, instead of sending it by the post. In 
reply to my inquiries, the porter said that all the family 
were expected at the end of the week ; that he had heard 
both Lady Ellinor and Miss Trevanion had been rather 
poorly, but that they were now better. I left my note 
with orders to forward it ; and my wounds bled afresh as 
I came away. 


388 


THE CAXTONS: 


We had the whole coach to ourselves in our journey, 
and a silent journey it was, till we arrived at a little town 
about eight miles from my uncle’s residence, to which we 
could only get through a cross-road. My uncle insisted 
on preceding us that night, and, though he had written, 
before we started, to announce our coming, he was 
fidgety lest the poor tower should not make the best figure 
it could ; so he went alone, and we took our ease at our 
inn. 

Betimes the next day we hired a fly coach — for a chaise 
could never have held us and my father’s books — and 
jogged through a labyrinth of villanous lanes, which no 
Marshal Wade had ever reformed from their primal chaos. 
But poor Mrs. Primmins and the canary-bird alone seemed 
sensible of the jolts ; the former, who sat opposite to us 
wedged amidst a medley of packages, all marked “ Care, 
to be kept top uppermost,” (why I know not, for they 
were but books, and whether they lay top or bottom it 
Could not materially affect their value), — the former, I 
say, contrived to extend her arms over those diajecta 
membra, and, griping a window-sill with the right hand, 
and a window-sill with the left, kept her seat rampant, 
like the split eagle of the Austrian Empire — in fact, it 
would be well now-a-days, if the split eagle were as firm 
as Mrs. Primmins 1 As for the canary, it never failed to 
respond, by an astonished chirp, to every “Gracious 
me ! ” and “ Lord save us I ” which the delve into a rut, 
or tlie bump out of it, sent forth from Mrs. Primmins’s 
lips, with all the emphatic dolor of the “ At ai I ” in a 
Greek chorus. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


389 


But my father, with his broad hat over his brows, vvas 
ill deep thought. The scenes of his youth were rising be- 
fore him, and his memory went, smooth as a spirit’s 
wing, over delve and bump. And my mother, who sat 
next him, had her arm on his shoulder, and was watching 
his face jealously. Did she think that, in that thoughtful 
face, there was regret for the old love ? Blanche, who 
had been very sad, and had wept much and quietly since 
they put on her the mourning, and told her that she had 
no brother (though she had no remembrance of the lost), 
began now to evince infantine curiosity and eagerness to 
catch the first peep of her father’s beloved tower. And 
Blanche sat on my knee, and I shared her impatience. 
At last there came in view a church spire — a church — 
a plain square building near it, the parsonage (my father’s 
old home), — a long straggling street of cottages and rude 
shops, with a better kind of house here and there — and 
in the hinder ground, a grey deformed mass of wall and 
ruin, placed on one of those eminences on which the Danes 
loved to pitch camp or build fort, with one high, rude, 
Anglo-Norman tower rising from the midst. Few trees 
were round it, and those either poplars or firs, save, as we 
approached, one mighty oak — integral and unscathed. 
The road now wound behind the parsonage, and up a 
steep ascent. Such a road I the whole parish ought to 
hare been flogged for it 1 If I had sent up a road like 
that, even on a map, to Dr. Herman, I should not have 
sat down in comfort for a week to come 1 
The fly-coach came to a full stop. 

33 * 


390 


THE CAXTONS; 


“ Let us go out,” cried I, opening the door, and spring 
ing to the ground to set the example. 

Blanche followed, and my respected parents came next. 
But when Mrs. Primmins was about to heave herself into 
movement, 

“ PapceP^ said my father. “I think, Mrs. Primmins, 
you must remain in, to keep the books steady.” 

“ Lord love you I ” cried Mrs. Primmins, aghast. 

“ The substraction of such a mass, or moles — supple 
and elastic as all flesh is, and fitting into the hard corners 
of the inert matter — such a substraction, Mrs. Primmins, 
would leave a vacuum which no natural system, certainly 
no artificial organization, could sustain. There would be 
a regular dance of atoms, Mrs. Primmins ; my books 
would fly here, there, on the floor, out of the window I 

“ ‘ Corporis opicium est quoniam omnia deorsumj* 

The business of a body like yours, Mrs. Primmins, is to 
press all things down — to keep them tight, as you will 
know one of these days — that is, if you will do me the 
favor to read Lucretius, and master that material phi- 
losophy, of which I may say, without flattery, my dear 
Mrs. Primmins, that you are a living illustration.” 

These, the first words my father had spoken since we 
set out from the inn, seemed to assure my mother that 
she need have no apprehension as to the character of his 
thoughts, for her brow cleared, and she said, laughing, 

“ Only look at poor Primmins, and then at that hill I ” 

“ You may subtract Primmins, if you will be answer- 


4 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


391 


able for tne remnant, Kitty. Only, I warn you, tnat it is 
against all the laws of physics.” 

So saying, he sprang lightly forward, and, taking hold of 
my arm, paused and looked round, and drew the loud free 
breath with which we draw native air. 

“And yet,” said my father, after that grateful and 
affectionate inspiration — “and yet, it must be owned, 
that a more ugly country one cannot see out of Cam- 
bridgeshire.” * 

“ Nay,” said I, “ it is bold and large, it has a beauty 
of its own. Those immense, undulating, uncultivated, 
treeless tracts have surely their charm of wildness and 
solitude I And how they suit the character of the ruin 1 
All is feudal there I I understand Roland better now.” 

“ I hope to heaven Cardan will come to no harm I ” 
cried my father ; “ he is very handsomely bound ; and he 
fitted beautifully just into the fleshiest part of that fidgety 
Primmins.” 

Blanche, meanwhile, had run far before us, and I 
followed first. There were still the remains of that deep 
trench (surrounding the ruins on three sides, leaving a 
ragged hill-top at the fourth) which made the favorite 
fortification of all the Teutonic tribes. A causeway, 
raised on bfick arches, now, however, supplied the place 
of the drawbridge, and the outer gate was but a mass of 

* This certainly cannot be said of Cumberland generally, one of 
the most beautiful countries in Great Britain. But the immediate 
district to which Mr. Caxton’s exclamation refers, if not ugly, is at 
'feast savage, bare, and rude. 


392 


THE CAXTONS: 


picturesque ruin. Entering into the courtyard or bailey, 
the old castle mound, from which justice had been dis- 
pensed, was in full view, rising higher than the broken 
walls around it, and partially overgrown with brambles. 
And there stood, comparatively whole, the Tower or 
Keep, and from its portals emerged the veteran owner. 

His ancestors might have received us in more state, 
but certainly they could not have given us a warmer 
greeting. In fact, in his own domain Roland appeared 
Another man. His stiffness, which was a little repulsive 
to those who did not understand it, was all gone. He 
seemed less proud, precisely because he and his pride, on 
that ground, were on good terms with each other. How 
gallantly he extended — not his arm, in our modem 
Jack-and-Jill sort of fashion — but his right hand to my 
mother ; how carefully he led her over “ brake, bush, and 
scaur,” through the low vaulted door, where a tall 
servant, who, it was easy to see, had been a soldier — in 
the precise livery, no doubt, warranted by the heraldic 
colors (his stockings were red 1) — stood upright as a 
sentry. And, coming into the hall, it looked absolutely 
cheerful — it took us by surprise. There was a great 
fire-place, and, though it was still summer, .a great fire ! 
It did not seem a bit too much, for the walls were stone^ 
the lofty roof open to the rafters, while the windows were 
small and narrow, and so high and so deep sunk that one 
seemed in a vault. Nevertheless, I say the room looked 
sociable and cheerful — thanks principally to the fire, and 
partly to a very ingenious medley of old tapestry at one 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


393 


end, and matting at the other, fastened to the lower part 
of the walls, seconded by an arrangement of funiiture 
which did credit to my uncle’s taste for the picturesque. 
After we had looked about and admired to our heart’s 
content, Roland took us — not up one of those noble 
staircases you see in the later manorial residences — but 
a little winding stone stair, into the rooms he had appro- 
priated to his guests. There was first a small chamber, 
which he called my father’s study — in truth, it would 
have done for any philosopher or saint who wished to 
shut out the world — and might have passed for the in- 
terior of such a column as the Stylites inhabited ; for you 
must have climbed a ladder to have looked out of the 
window, and then the vision of no short-sighted man 
could have got over the interval in the wall made by the 
narrow casement, which, after all, gave no other prospect 
than a Cumberland sky, with an occasional rook in it. 
But my father, I think I have said before, did not much 
care for scenery, and he looked round with great 
satisfaction upon the retreat assigned him. 

‘‘We can knock up shelves for your books in no time,’* 
said my uncle, rubbing his hands. 

“It would be a charity,” quoth my father, “for they 
have been very long in a recumbent position, ana would 
like to stretch themselves, poor things. My dear Roland, 
this room is made for books — so round and so deep. 
I shall sit here like Truth in a well.” 

“And there is a room for you, sister, just out of it,” 
said ray uncle, opening a little, low, prison-like door into 


394 


THE CAXTONS: 


a charming room, for its window was low, and it had an 
iron balcony ; “ and out of that is the bedroom. For 
you, Pisistratus, my boy, I am afraid that it is soldier’s 
quarters, indeed, with which you will have to put up. 
But, never mind ; in a day or two we shall make ail 
worthy a general of your illustrious name — for he was 
a great general, Pisistratus the First — was he not, 
brother ? ” 

“All tyrants are,” said my father; “the knack of 
soldiering is indispensable to them.” 

“ Oh, you may say what you please here,” said Roland, 
in high good-humor, as he drew me down stairs, still 
apologising for my quarters, and so earnestly, that I 
made up my mind that I was to be put into an oubliette. 
Nor were my suspicions much dispelled on seeing that 
we had to leave the keep, and pick our way into what 
seemed to me a mere heap of rubbish, on the dexter side 
of the court. But I was agreeably surprised to find, 
amidst these wrecks, a room with a noble casement, com- 
manding the whole country, and placed immediately orer 
a plot of ground cultivated as a garden. The furniture 
was ample, though homely; the floors and walls well 
matted; and, altogether, despite the inconvenience of 
having to cross the courtyard to get to the rest of the 
house, and being wholly without the modern luxury of a 
bell, I thought that I could not be better lodged. 

“ But this is a perfect bower, my dear uncle I Depend 
on it, it was the bower-chamber of the Dames do Caxton 
— heaven rest them I ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


396 


said my uncle, gravely; “I suspect it musi 
have been the chaplain^s room, for the chapel was to the 
right of you. An earlier chapel, indeed, formerly ex- 
isted in the keep tower — for, indeed, it is scarcely a true 
keep without chapel, well, and hall. I can show you 
part of the roof of the first, and the two last are entire ; 
the well is very curious, formed in the substance of the 
wall at one angle of the hall. In Charles the First^s 
time, our ancestor lowered his only son down in a bucket, 
and kept him there six hours, while a Malignant mob 
was storming the tower. I need not say that our 
ancestor himself scorned to hide from such a rabble, for 
he was a grown man. The boy lived to be a sad spend- 
thrift, and used the well for cooling his wine. He drank 
up a great many good acres.” 

I should scratch him out of the pedigree, if I were 
you. But pray, have you not discovered the proper 
chamber of that great Sir William, about whom my father 
is so shamefully sceptical?” 

“ To tell you a secret,” answered the Captain, giving 
me a sly poke in the ribs, I have put your father into 
it I There are the initial letters W. C. let into the eusp 
of the York rose, and the date three years before the 
battle of Bosworth, over the chimneypiece.” 

I could not help joining my uncle’s grim, low laugh at 
this characteristic pleasantry; and after I had com- 
plimented him on so judicious a mode of proving his 
point, I asked him how he could possibly have contrived 
to fit up the ruin so well, especially as he had scarcely 
visited it since his purchase. 


396 


THE C AXTONS: 


Why,” said he, “ some years ago, that poor fellow 
you now see as my servant, and who is gardener, bailiff, 
seneschal, butler, and anything else you ?an put him to, 
was sent out of the army on the invalid list. So I placed . 
him here ; and as he is a capital carpenter, and has had a 
very fair education, I told him what I wanted, and put 
b} a small sum every year for repairs and famishing. It 
is astonishing how little it cost me ; for Bolt, poor. fellow 
(that is his name,) caught the right spirit of the thing, 
and most of the furniture (which you see is ancient and 
suitable,) he picked up at different cottages and farm- 
houses in the neighborhood. As it is, however, we have 
plenty more rooms here and there — only, of late,” con- 
tinued my uncle, slightly changing color, “I had no 
money to spare. But come,” he resumed, with an evident 
effort — “come and see my barrack : it is on the other 
side of the hall, and made out of what no doubt were the 
butteries.” 

We reached the yard and found the fly-coach had just 
crawled to the door. My father’s head was buried deep 
in the vehicle, — he was gathering up his packages, and 
sending out, oracle like, various muttered objurgations 
and anathemas upon Mrs. Primmins and her vacuum ; 
which Mrs. Primmins, standing by and making a lap with 
her apron to receive the packages and anathemas 
simultaneously, bore with the mildness of an angel, lifting 
up her eyes to heaven and murmuring something about 
“poor old bones.” Though, as for Mrs. Primmins’s 
oones, they had been myths these twenty years, and you 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 397 

miglit as soon have found a Plesiosaurus in the fat lands 
of Romney Marsh as a bone amidst those layers of flesh 
in which my poor father thought he had so carefully 
cottoned up his Cardan. 

Leaving these parties to adjust matters between them, 
we stepped under the low doorway, and entered Roland’s 
room. Oh, certainly Bolt had caught the spirit of tl e 
thing I — certainly he had penetrated down to the pathos 
that lay within the deeps of Roland’s character. Buffon 
says the style is the man ; ” there, the room was the 
man. That nameless, inexpressible, soldier-like, methodi- 
cal neatness which belonged to Roland — that was the 
first thing that struck one — that was the general 
character of the whole. Then, in details, there, on stout 
oak shelves, were the books on which my father loved to 
jest his more imaginative brother, — there they were, 
Froissart, Barante, Joinville, the Mort d' Arthur, Amadis 
of Gaul, Spenser’s Fairy Queen, a noble copy of Strutt’s 
Horda, Mallet’s Northern Antiquities, Percy’s Beliques, 
Pope’s Homer, books on gunnery, archery, hawking, 
fortification — old chivalry and modern war together 
cheek*by-jowl. 

Old chivalry and modern war I — look to that tilting 
helmet with the tall Caxton crest, and look to that 
trophy near it, a French cuirass — and that old banner 
(a knight’s pennon) surmounting those crossed bayonets 
And over the chimney-piece there — bright, clean, and, I 
warrant you, dusted daily — are Roland’s own sword, his 
holsters and pistols, yea, the saddle, pierced and lacerated, 

I.-.34 


398 


THE OAXTONS. 


from which he had reeled when that leg — I gasped — 1 
felt it all at a glance, and I stole softly to the spot, and, 
had Roland not been there, I could have kissed that 
sword as reverently as if it had been a Bayard^s or a 
Sidney’s. 

My uncle was too modest to guess my emotion ; he 
rather thought I had turned my face to conceal a smile 
at his vanity, and said, in a deprecating tone of apology, 
— “ It was all Bolt’s doing, foolish fellow.” 


END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 


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I.: 


THE GAXTONS. 


PART TENTH, 

CONTINUED, 


CHAPTER IV. 

Our host regaled us with a hospitality that notably 
contrasted his economical thrifty habits in London. To 
be sure^ Bolt had caught the great pike which headed 
the feast ; and Bolt, no doubt, had helped to rear those 
fine chickens ah ovo : Bolt, I have no doubt, made that 
excellent Spanish omelette ; and, for the rest, the 
products of the sheep walk and the garden came in as 
volunteer auxiliaries — very different from the mercenary 
recruits by which those metropolitan Condottieri, the 
butcher and greengrocer, hasten the ruin of that melan- 
choly commonwealth, called “genteel poverty.” 

Our evening passed cheerfully ; and Roland, contrary 
to his custom, was talker in chief. It was eleven o’clock 
before Bolt appeared with a lantern to conduct me 
1 * ( 6 ) 


6 


THE CAXTON S : 


through the courtyard to my dormitory among the ruins 

— a ceremony which, every night, shine or dark, he in- 
sisted upon punctiliously performing. 

It was long before I could sleep — before I could 
believe that but so few days had elapsed since Roland 
heard .of his son’s death — that son whose fate had so 
long tortured him ; and yet, never had Roland appeared 
BO free from sorrow I Was it natural — was it effort? 
Several days passed before I could answer that question, 
and then not wholly to my satisfaction. Effort there 
was, or rather resolute, systematic determination. At 
moments Roland’s head drooped, his brows met, and the 
whole man seemed to sink. Yet these were only 
moments ; he would rouse himself up, like a dozing 
charger at the sound of a trumpet, and shake off the 
creeping weight. But whether from the vigor of his 
determination, or from some aid in other trains of reflec- 
tion, I could not but perceive that Roland’s sadness 
really was less grave and bitter than it had been, or than 
it was natural to suppose. He seemed to transfer, daily, 
more and more, his affections from the dead to those 
around him, especially to Blanche and myself. He let it 
be seen that he looked on me now as his lawful successor 

— as the future supporter of his' name : he was fond of 
confiding to me all his little plans, and consulting me on 
them. He would walk with me around his domains (of 
which I shall say more hereafter,) — point out, from 
every eminence we climbed, where the broad lands (vhich 
his forefathers had owned stretched away to the horizon ; 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


7 


unfold with tender hand the mouldering pedigree, and 
rest lingeringly on those of his ancestors who had held 
martial post, or had died on the field. There was a 
crusader who had followed Richard to Ascalon ; there 
was a knight who had fought at Agincourt ; there was a 
cavalier (whose picture was still extant), with fair love- 
locks, who had fallen at Worcester — no doubt the same 
who had cooled his son in that well which the son de- 
voted to more agreeable associations. But of all these 
worthies there was none whom my uncle, perhaps from 
the spirit of contradiction, valued like that apocryphal 
Sir William : and why ? because, when the apostate 
Stanley turned the fortunes of the field at Bosworth, and 
when that cry of despair, — “ Treason I treason I ” burst 
from the lips of the last Plantagenet, “ amongst the faith- 
less,” this true soldier, “faithful found I” had fallen in 
that lion rush which Richard made at his foe. “ Your 
father tells me that Richard was a murderer and usurper,” 
quoth my uncle. “ Sir, that might be true or not ; but 
it was not on the field of battle that his followers were to 
reason on the character of the master who trusted them, 
especially when a legion of foreign hirelings stood 
opposed to them. I would not have descended from 
that turncoat Stanley to be lord of all the lands the earls 
of Derby can boast of. Sir, in loyalty, men fight and 
die for a grand principle and a lofty passion ; and this 
brave Sir William was paying back to the last Plantage- 
net the benefits he had received from the first I ” 

“And yet it may be doubted,” said I, maliciously, 
“whether William Caxton the printer did not — ” 


8 


THE OAXTONS 


** Plague, pestilence, and fire, seize William Caxton the 
printer, and his invention too 1 ” cried my uncle, barba^ 
roLsly. “When there were only a few books, at least 
they were good ones ; and now they are so plentiful, all 
they do is to confound the judgment, unsettle the reason, 
drive the good books out of cultivation, and draw a 
ploughshare of innovation over every ancient landmark ; 
seduce the women, womanise the men, upset states, 
thrones, and churches; rear a race of chattering, con- 
ceited coxcombs, who can always find books in plenty to 
excuse them from doing their duty ; make the poor dis- 
contented, the rich crotchety and whimsical, refine away 
the stout old virtues into quibbles and sentiments I All 
imagination formerly was expended in noble action, ad- 
venture, enterprise, high deeds and aspirations ; now, a 
man can but be imaginative by feeding on the false ex- 
citement of passions he never felt, dangers he never 
shared ; and he fritters away all there is of life to spare 
in him upon the fictitious love-sorrows of Bond Street 
and St. James’s. Sir, chivalry ceased when the press 
rose I and to fasten upon me, as a forefather, out of all 
men who ever lived and sinned, the very man who has 
most destroyed what I most valued — who, by the Lord I 
with his cursed invention has well-nigh got rid of respect 
for forefathers altogether — is a cruelty of which my 
brother had never been capable, if that printer’s devil had 
not got hold of him!” 

That a man in this blessed nineteenth century should 
be such a Tandal 1 and that my Uncle Boland should 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


9 


.-al^ in a strain that Totila would have been ashamed of, 
within so short a time after my father’s scientific and 
erudite oration on the Hygeiana of Books, was enough 
to make one despair of the progress of intellect and the 
perfectibility of our species. And I have no manner of 
doubt ’.hat, all the while, my uncle had a brace of books 
in his pockets, Robert Hall one of them I In truth, he 
had talked himself into a passion, and did not know what 
nonsense he was saying. But this explosion of Captain 
Roland’s has shattered the thread of my matter. Pouflf I 
I must take breath and begin again I 

Yes, in spite of my sauciness, the old soldier evidently 
took to me more and more. And, besides our critical 
examination of the property and the pedigree, he carried 
me with him on long excursions to distant villages, where 
some memorial of a defunct Caxton, a coat of arms, or 
an epitaph on a tombstone, m’ght be still seen. And he 
made me pore over topographical works and county 
histories (forgetful, Goth that he was, that for those very 
authorities he was indebted to the repudiated printer I) 
to find some anecdote of his beloved dead ! In truth, 
the county for miles round bore the vestigia of those old 
Caxtons ; their handwriting was on many a broken wall. 
And, obscure as they all were, compared to that great 
operative of the Sanctuary at Westminster, whom my 
father clung to — still, that the yesterdays that had lighted 
them the way to dusty death had cast no glare on dis- 
honored scutcheons seemed clear, from the popular 
respect and traditional affection in which I found that 
tlm name was still held in hamlet and homestead. It was 


10 


THE CAXTONS: 


pleasant to see the veneration with which this small 
hidalgo of some three hundred a-year was held, and the 
patriarchal affection with which he returned it. Roland 
was a man who would walk into a cottage, rest his cork 
leg on the hearth, and talk for the hour together upon 
all that lay nearest to the hearts of the owners. There 
is a peculiar spirit of aristocracy amongst agricultural 
peasants ; they like old names and families ; they identify 
themselves with the honors of a house, as if of its clan. 
They do not care so much for wealth as townsfolk and 
the middle class do ; they have a pity, but a respectful 
one, for well-born poverty. And then this Roland, too 
— who would go and dine in a cook-shop, and receive 
change for a shilling, and shun the ruinous luxury of a 
hack cabriolet — could be positively extravagant in his 
liberalities to those around him. He was altogether 
another being in his paternal acres. The shabby-genteel, 
half-pay captain, lost in the whirl of London, here luxu- 
riated into a dignified ease of manner that Chesterfield 
might have admired. And, if to please is the true sign 
of politeness, I wish you could have seen the faces that 
smiled upon Captain Roland, as he walked down the 
village, nodding from side to side. 

One day a frank, hearty, old woman, who had known 
Roland as a boy, seeing him lean on my arm, stopped us, 
as she said bluffly, to take a “ geud luik ” at me. 

Fortunately I was stalwart enough to pass muster, 
oven in the eyes of a Cumberland matron ; and after a 
compliment at which Roland seemed much pleased, =?hf- 
said to me, but pointing (o the Captain — 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


11 


“ Hegh, sir, now you ha the bra time before you ; you 
maun een try and be as geud as he. And if life last, ye 
wull too — for there never waur a bad ane of that stock 
Wi’ heads kindly stup’d to the least, and lifted manfu’ 
oop to the heighest — that ye all war’ sin ye came from 
the Ark. Biessins on the ould name — though little pelf 
goes with it — it sounds on the peur man’s ear like a bit 
of gould I ” 

“Bo you not see now,” said Roland, as we turned 
away, “ what we owe to a name, and what to our fore- 
fathers ? — do you not see why the remotest ancestor has 
a right to our respect and consideration — for he was a 
parent? ‘ Honor your parents ’ — the law does not say, 
‘ Honor your children V If a child disgrace us, and the 
dead, and the sanctity of this great heritage of their 
virtues — the name; — if he does — ” Roland stopped 
short, and added fervently, “ But you are my heir now — - 
I have no fear ! What matter one foolish old man’s 
sorrows? — the name, that property of generations, is 
saved, thank Heaven — the name 1 ” 

Now the riddle was solved, and I understood why, 
amidst all his natural grief for a son’s loss, that proud 
father was consoled. For he was less himself a father 
than a son — son to the long dead. From every grave 
where a progenitor slept, he had heard a parent’s voice 
He could bear to be bereaved, if the forefathers were not 
dishonored. Roland was more than half a Roman — 
the son might still cling to his household affections, but 
‘^he lares were a part of his religioi* 


THE CAXTONS*. 


IS 


CHAPTER V. 

But I ought to be hard at work, preparing myself for 
Cambridge. The deuce I — how can I ? The point in 
academical education on which I require most prepara- 
tion is Greek composition. I come to my father, who, 
one might think, was at home enough in this. But rare 
indeed is it to find a great scholar who is a good teacher. 

My dear father 1 if one is content to take you in your 
own way, there never was a more admirable instructor 
for the heart, the head, the principles, or the taste — 
when you have discovered that there is some one sore to 
be healed — one defect to be repaired : and you have 
rubbed your spectacles, and got your hand fairly into 
that recess between your frill and your waistcoat. But 

to go to you, cut and dry, monotonously, regularly, 

book and exercise in hand — to see the mournful patience 
with which you tear yourself from that great volume of 
Cardan in the very honeymoon of possession — and then 
to note those mild eyebrows gradually distend themselves 
into perplexed diagonals, over some false quantity or 
some barbarous collocation — till there steal forth that 
horrible “ Papae ! ” which means more on your lips than 
I am sure it ever did when Latin was a live language, 
and ‘‘Papae!” a natural and unpedantic ejaculation 1 


A FAMILY PICTL RE. 


13 


no, I would sooner blunder through the dark by myself a 
thousand times, than light my rushlight at the lamp of 
that Phlegethonian “ Papae I ” 

And then my father would wisely and kindly, but 
wondrous slowly, erase three-fourths of one’s pet verses, 
and intercalate others that one saw were exquisite, but 
could not exactly see why. And then one asked why ; 
and my father shook his head in despair, and said — 
“ But you ought to feel why 1 ” 

In short, scholarship to him was like poetry : he could 
no more teach it you than Pindar could have taught you 
how to make an ode. You breathed the aroma, but you 
could no more seize and analyse it, than, with the open- 
ing of your naked hand, you could carry off the scent of 
a rose. I soon left my father in peace to Cardan, and to 
the Great Book, which last, by the way, advanced but 
slowly. For Uncle Jack had now insisted on its being 
published in quarto, with illustrative plates ; and those 
plates took an immense time, and were to cost an immense 
sum — but that cost was the affair of the Anti Publisher 
Society. But how can I settle to work by myself? No 
sooner have I got into my room — penilus ah orbc 
divisus, as I rashly think — than there is a tap at the 
door. Now it is my mother, who is benevolently engaged 
upon making curtains to all the windows (a trifling super- 
fluity that Bolt had forgotten or disdained,) and who 
wants to know how the draperies are fashioned at Mr. 
Trevanion’s : a, pretence to have me near her, ano see 
with her own eyes that I am not fretting ; the mo^ 

II. 


14 


'PHE CAXTONS: 


sLe hears 1 have shut myself up in my room, she is sure 
that it is for sorrow. Now it is Bolt, who is making 
book-shelves for my father, and desires to consult me at 
every turn, especially as I have given him a Gothic de- 
sign, which pleases him hugely. Now it is Blanche^ 
whom, in an evil hour, I undertook to teach to draw, and 
who comes in on tiptoe, vowing she’ll not disturb me, and 
sits so quiet that she fidgets me out of all patience. 
Now, and much more often, it is the Captain, who wants 
me to walk, to ride, to fish. And, by St. Hubert ! (saint 
of the chase) bright August comes — and there is moor- 
game on those barren wolds — and my uncle has given 
me the gun he shot with at my age — single-barrelled, 
flint lock — but you would not have laughed at it if you 
had seen the strange feats it did in Roland’s hands — 
while in mine, I could always lay the blame on the flint 
lock 1 Time, in short, passed rapidly ; and if Roland and 
I had our dark hours, we chased them away before they 
could settle — shot them on the wing as they got up. 

Then, too, though the immediate scenery around my 
uncle’s was so bleak and desolate, the country within a 
few miles was so full of objects of interest — of land- 
scapes so poetically grand or lovely ; and occasionally we 
coaxed my father from the Cardan, and spent whole days 
by the margin of some glorious lake. 

Amongst these excursions, I made one by myself to 
that house in which my father had known the bliss and 
ihe pangs of that stern first love which still left its scars 
fresh on my own memo j The house, large an.] im 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


15 


posing, was shut up — the Trevanions had not been there 
for years — the pleasure-grounds had been contracted 
into the smallest possible space. There was no positive 
decay or ruin — that Trevanion would never have allowed ; 
but there was the dreary look of absenteeship everywhere. 
I penetrated into the house with the help of my card and 
half-a-crown. I saw that memorable boudoir — I could 
ancy the very spot in which my father had heard the 
sentence that had changed the current of his life. And 
when I returned home, I looked with new tenderness on 
ray father’s placid brow — and blessed anew that tender 
helpmate, who, in her patient love, had chased from it 
every shadow. 

I had received one letter from Vivian a few days after 
our arrival. It had been re-directed from my father’s 
house, at which I had given him my address. It was 
short, but seemed cheerful. He said, that he believed 
ne had at last hit on the right way, and should keep to 
it — that he and the world were better friends than they 
liad been — that the only way to keep friends with the 
world was to treat it as a tamed tiger, and have one hand 
on a crowbar while one fondled the beast with the other. 
He enclosed me a bank-note, which somewhat more than 
lovered his debt to me, and bade me pay him the surplus 
when he should claim it as a millionnaire. He gave me 
no address in his letter, but it bore the post-mark of 
Godalraing. I had the impertinent curiosity to look into 
n old topographical work upon Surrey, and m a supple- 


16 


THE CAXTONS: 


mental itinerary I found this passage : “ To the left of 
the beech-wood, three miles from Godaiming, yon catch 
a glimpse of the elegant seat of Francis Yivian, Esq.” 
To judge by the date of the work, the said Francis Yivian 
might be the grandfather of my friend, his namesake. 
There could no longer be any doubt as to the parentage 
of this prodigal son. 

The long vacation was now nearly over, and all his 
guests were to leave the poor Captain. In fact, we had 
made a considerable trespass on his hospitality. It was 
settled that I was to accompany my father and mother 
to their long-neglected penates, and start thence for 
Cambridge. 

Our parting was sorrowful — even Mrs. Primmins wept 
as she shook hands with Bolt. But Bolt, an old soldier, 
was of course a lady’s man. The brothers did not shake 
hands only — they fondly embraced, as brothers of that 
time of life rarely do now-a-days, except on the stage. 
And Blanche, with one arm round my mother’s neck and 
one round mine, sobbed in my ear, — “But I will be your 
little wife, I will.” Finally, the fly-coach once more 
received us all — all but poor Blanche, and we looked 
round and missed her. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


n 


CHAPTER VI. 

Alma Mater 1 Alma Mater I New-fashioned folks, 
with their large theories of education, may find fault with 
thee. But a true Spartan mother thou art — hard and 
stern as the old matron who bricked up her son Pausanias, 
bringing the first stone to immure him ; hard and stem, 
I say, to the worthless, but full of majestic tenderness 
to the worthy. 

For a young man to go up to Cambridge (I say nothing 
of Oxford, knowing nothing thereof,) merely as routine 
work, to lounge through three years to a degree among 
the 01 Tio-Kjjof, — for such an one, Oxford Street herself, 
whom the immortal Opium-Eater hath so direly apostro 
phised, is not a more careless and stony-hearted mother. 
But for him who will read, who will work, who will seize 
the rare advantages proffered, who will select his friends 
judiciously — yea, out of that vast ferment of young idea 
in its lusty vigor, choose the good and reject the bad — 
there is plenty to make those three years rich with fmit 
imperishable — three years nobly spent, even though one 
must pass over the Ass’s Bridge to get into the Temple 
of Honor. 

Important changes in the Academical system have been 
mcently announced, and honors are henceforth to be 


B 


18 


THE CAXTONS: 


accorded to the successful disciples in moral and natural 
sciences. By the side of the old throne of Mathesis, they 
have placed two very useful fauteuils d la Voltaire. I 
have no objection ; but, in those three years of life, it is 
lot so much the thing learned, as the steady perseverance 
in learning something, that is excellent 

It was fortunate, in one respect, for me that I had seen 
a little of the real world — the metropolitan, before I 
came to that mimic one — the cloistral. For what were 
called pleasures in the last, and which might have allured 
me, had I come fresh from school, had no charm for me 
now. Hard drinking and high play, a certain mixture 
of coarseness and extravagance, made the fashion among 
the idle when I was at the university, consule Planco — 
when Wordsworth was master of Trinity; it may be 
altered now. 

But I had already outlived such temptations, and so, 
naturally, I was thrown out of the society of the idle, and 
somewhat into that of the laborious. 

Still, to speak frankly, I had no longer the old pleasure 
in books. If my acquaintance with the great world had 
destroyed the temptation to puerile excesses, it had also 
increased my constitutional tendency to practical action. 
And alas I in spite of all the benefit I had derived from 
Robert Hall, there were times when memory was so 
poignant that I had no choice but to rush from the lonely 
room haunted by tempting phantoms too dangerously 
fair, and sober down the fever of the heart by some 
violent bodily fatigue. The ardor which belongs to early 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


19 


youth, and which it best dedicates to knowledge, had been 
charmed prematurely to shrines less severely sacred. 
Therefore, though I labored, it was with that full sense 
of labor which (as I found at a much later period of life) 
the truly triumphant student never knows. Learning — 
that marble image — warms into life, not at the toil of 
the chisel, but the worship of the sculptor. The me- 
chanical workman finds but the voiceless stone. 

At my uncle’s, such a thing as a newspaper rarely made 
its appearance. At Cambridge, even among reading 
men, the newspapers had their due importance. Politics 
ran high ; and I had not been three days at Cambridge 
before I heard Trevanion’s, name. Newspapers, there- 
fore, had their charms for me. Trevanion’s prophecy 
about himself seemed about to be fulfilled. There were 
rumors of changes in the Cabinet. Trevanion’s name 
was bandied to and fro, struck from praise to blame, high 
and low, as a shuttlecock. Still the changes were not 
made, and the Cabinet held firm. Not a word in the 
Morning Post, under the head of fashionable intelligence, 
as to rumors that would have agitated me more than the 
rise and fall of governments — no hint of “the speedy 
nuptials of the daughter and sole heiress of a distin- 
guished and wealthy commoner : ” only now and then, in 
enumerating the circle of brilliant guests at the house of 
some party chief, I gulped back the heart that rushed to 
rrjy lips, when I saw the names of Lady EUinor and Miss 
'LVevanion. 


20 


THE CAXTONS: 


But amongst all that prolific progeny of the periodical 
press — remote offspring of my great namesake and an- 
cestor (for I hold the faith of my father) — where was 
the Literary Times'^ — what had so long retarded its 
promised blossoms ? Not a leaf in the shape of adver- 
tisements had yet emerged from its mother earth. I 
hoped from my heart that the whole thing was abandoned, 
and would not mention it in my letters home, lest I should 
revive the mere idea of it. But, in default of the Lite- 
rary Times, there did appear a new journal, a daily 
journal, too, a tall, slender, and meagre stripling, with a 
vast head, by way of prospectus, which protruded itself 
for three weeks successively at the top of the leading 
article — with a fine and subtle body of paragraphs — 
and the smallest legs, in the way of advertisements, that 
any poor newspaper ever stood upon I And yet this 
attenuated journal had a plump and plethoric title, a 
title that smacked of turtle and venison ; an aldermanic, 
portly, grandiose, Falstaffian title — it was called The 
Capitalist. And all those fine, subtle paragraphs were 
larded out with recipes how to make money. There was 
an El Dorado in every sentence. To believe that Paper, 
you would think no man had ever yet found a proper 
return for his pounds, shillings, and pence. You would 
turn up your nose at twenty per cent. There was a great 
deal about Ireland — not her wrongs, thank Heaven i 
but her fisheries : a long inquiry what had become of the 
pearls for which Britain was once so famous : a learned 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


21 


disquisition upon certain lost gold-mines now happily re- 
discovered ; a very ingenious proposition to turn London 
smoke into manure, by a new chemical process : recom- 
mendations to the poor to hatch chickens in ovens, like 
the ancient Egyptians ; agricultural schemes for sowing 
the waste lands in England with onions, upon the system 
adopted near Bedford — net produce one hundred pounds 
an acre. In short, according to that paper, every rood 
of ground might well maintain its man, and every shilling 
be like Hobson’s money-bag, “the fruitful parent of a 
hundred more.” For three days, at the newspaper room 
of the Union Club, men talked of this journal; some 
pished, some sneered, some wondered : till an ill-natured 
mathematician, who had just taken his degree, and had 
spare time on his hands, sent a long letter to the Morning 
Chronicle j showing up more blunders, in some article to 
which the editor of The Capitalist had specially invited 
attention, than would have paved the whole island ot 
Laputa. After that time, not a soul read The Capitalist. 
How long it dragged on its existence I know not ; but 
it certainly did not die of a maladie de langueur. 

Little thought I, when I joined in the laugh against 
The Capitalist, that I ought rather to have followed it 
to its grave in black crape and weepers — unfeeling wretch 
that I was 1 But, like a poet, 0 Capitalist ! thou wert 
not discovered, and appreciated, and prized, and mourned, 
till thou wert dead and buried, and the bill came in for 
thy monument I 


2a 


22 


THE CAXTONS. 


The first term of my college life was jast expiring, 
when I received a letter from my mother, so agitated, so 
alarming — at first reading so unintelligible — that I could 
only see that some great misfortune had befallen us ; and 
I stopped short and dropped on my knees to pray for 
the life and health of those whom that misfortune more 
specially seemed to menace ; and then — and then, to- 
wards the end of the last blurred sentence, read twice, 
thrice, over — I could cry; “Thank Heaven, thank 
Heaven 1 it is only, then, money after all I ’’ 


PART ELEVENTH, 


CHAPTER I. 

The next day, on the outside of the Cambridge 
Telegraph, there was one passenger who ought to have 
impressed his fellow-travellers with a very respectful idea 
of his lore in the dead languages ; for not a single 
syllable, in a live one, did he vouchsafe to utter from the 
moment he ascended that “ bad eminence,” to the moment 
in which he regained his mother earth. “ Sleep,” says 
honest Sancho, “covers a man better than a cloak.” I 
am ashamed of thee, honest Sancho I thou art a sad 
plagiarist ; for Tibullus said pretty nearly the same thing 
before thee, — 

“ Te somnes fusco velavit amictu.”* 

But is not silence as good a cloak as sleep ? — does it 
not wrap a man round with as offuse and impervious a 
fold ? Silence — what a world it covers I — what busy 
schemes — what bright hopes aud dark fears — what 
ambition, or what despair ! Do you ever see a man in 


* Tibullus, iii. 4, 65. 


( 28 ) 


24 


THE CAXTONS: 


any society sitting mute for hours, and not feel an un- 
easy curiosity to penetrate the wall he thus builds up 
between others and himself? Does he not interest you 
far more than the brilliant talker at your left — the airy 
wit at your right, w^ose shafts fall in vain on the sullen 
barrier of the silent man I Silence, dark sister of 'Noz 
and Erebus, how, layer upon layer, shadow upon shadow, 
blackness upon blackness, thou stretchest thyself from 
hell to heaven, over thy two chosen haunts — man’s heart 
and the grave I 

So, then, wrapped in my great-coat and my silence, I 
performed my journey ; and on the evening of the second 
day I reached the old-fashioned brick house. How 
shrill on my ears sounded the bell 1 How strange and 
ominous to my impatience seemed the light gleaming 
across the windows of the hall I How my heart beat as 
I watched the face of the servant who opened the gate 
to my summons I 

“All well ?” cried I. 

“All well, sir,” answered the servant cheerfully. “ Mr. 
Squills, indeed, is with master, but I don’t think there is 
anything the matter.” 

But now my mother appeared at the threshold, and I 
was in her arms. 

“ Sisty, Sisty I— my dear, dear son I — beggared, perhaps 
— and my fault — mine.” 

“Yours I — come into this room, out of hearing — 
your fault ? ” 

“ Yes-— yes ! — for if I had had no brother, or if I 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


2g 


had not been led away, — if I had, as I ought, entreated 
poor Austin not to” — 

“ My dear, dearest mother, you accuse yourself for 
what, it seems, was my uncle’s misfortune — I am sure 
not even his fault 1 (I made a gulp there.) No, lay 
the fault on the right shoulders — the defunct shoulders 
of that horrible progenitor, William Caxton the printer, 
for, though I don’t yet know the particulars of what has 
happened, I will lay a wager it is connected with that 
fatal invention of printing. Come, come — my father is 
well, is he not ? ” 

“Yes, thank Heaven.” 

“And I too, and Roland, and little Blanche I Why, 
then, you are right to thank Heaven, for your true 
treasures are untouched. But sit down and explain, 
pray. ” 

“I cannot explain. I do not understand anything 
more than that he, my brother, — mine 1 — has involved 
Austin in^ — in” — (a fresh burst of tears.) 

I comforted, scolded, laughed, preached, and adjured 
in a breath ; and then, drawing my mother gently on, 
entered my father’s study. 

At the table was seated Mr. Squills, pen in hand, and 
a glass of his favorite punch by his side. My father was 
standing on the hearth, a shade more pale, but with a 
resolute expression on his countenance, which was new 
to its indolent thoughtful mildness. He lifted his eyes as 
the door opened, and then, putting his finger to his lips, 
as he glanced towards my mother, he said gaily, “No 

II — 3 


26 


THE CAXTONS: 


great harm done. Don’t believe her I Women always 
exaggerate, and make realities of their own bugbears : it 
is the vice of their lively imaginations, as Wierus has 
clearly shown in accounting for the marks, moles, and 
hare-lips which they inflict upon their innocent infants 
before they are even born. My dear boy,” added my 
father, as I here kissed him and smiled in his face, I 
thank you for that smile I God bless you I ” He wrung 
my hand, and turned a little aside. 

“It is a great comfort,” renewed my father, after a 
short pause, “ to know, when a misfortune happens, that 
it could not be helped. Squills has just discovered that 
I have no bump of cautiousness ; so that, craniologically 
speaking, if I had escaped one imprudence, I should 
certainly have run my head against another.” 

“A man with your development is made to be taken 
in,” said Mr. Squills, consolingly. 

“Do you hear that, my own Kitty ? and have you the 
heart to blame Jack any longer — a poor creature cursed 
with a bump that would take in the Stock Exchange ? 
And can any one resist his bump, Squills ? ” 

“ Impossible I ” said the surgeon authoritatively. 

“Sooner or later it must involve him in its airy 
meshes — eh, Squills ? entrap him into its fatal cerebral 
cell. There hi& fate waits him, like the ant-lion in its 
pit.” 

“Too true,” quoth Squills. “What a phrenological 
lecturer you would have made ! ” 

“Go, then, my love,” said my father, “and lay 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


21 


blame but on this melancholy cavity of mine, where 
cautiousness — is not I Go, and let Sisty have some 
supper ; for Squills says that he has a fine development 
of the mathematical organs, and we want his help. We 
are hard at work on figures, Pisistratus.” 

My mother looked broken-hearted, and, obeying sub- 
missively, stole to the door without a word. But as she 
reached the threshold she turned round, and beckoned to 
me to follow her. 

I whispered my father and went out. My mother was 
standing in the hall, and I saw by the lamp that she had 
dried her tears, and that her face, though very sad, was 
more composed. 

“ Sisty,” she said, in a low voice which struggled to be 
firm, “ promise me that you will tell me all — the worst, 
Sisty. They keep it from me, and that is my hardest 
punishment; for when I don’t know all that he — that 
Austin suffers, it seems to me as if I had lost his heart. 
Oh, Sisty I my child, my child, don’t fear me ! I shall be 
happy whatever befalls us, if I once get back my privilege 
— my privilege, Sisty, to comfort, to share I — do you 
understand me ? ” 

^'Yes, indeed, my mother! And with your good 
sense, and clear woman’s wit, if you will but feel how 
much we want them, you will be the best counsellor we 
could have. So never fear; you and I will ha^e no 
secrets.” 

My motner kissed me, and went away with a less heavj 
step 


28 


THE CAXTONS: 


As I re-entered, my father came across the room and 
embraced me. 

“My son,” he said in a faltering voice, “if your modest 
prospects in life are ruined” — 

“ Father, father, can you think of me at such a 
moment I Me ! — Is it possible to ruin the young, and 
strong, and healthy I Ruin me, with these thews and 
sinews I — ruin me, with the education you have given 
me — thews and sinews of the mind! Oh no! there. 
Fortune is harmless I And you forget, sir, — the saffron 
bag ! ” 

Squills leapt up, and, wiping his eyes with one hand, 
gave me a sounding slap on the shoulder with the other. 

“I am proud of the care I took of your infancy, 
Master Caxton. That comes of strengthening the diges- 
tive organs in early childhood. Such sentiments are a 
proof of magnificent ganglions in a perfect state of order. 
When a man’s tongue is as smooth as I am sure yours is, 
he slips through misfortune like an eel.” 

I laughed outright, my father smiled faintly : and, seat- 
ing myself, I drew towards me a paper filled with Squills’ 
memoranda, and said, “ Now to find the unknown 
quantity. What on earth is this ? ‘ Supposed value of 

books, £150.’ Oh, father! this is impossible. I was 
prepared for anything but that. Your books — they are 
your life ! ” 

“ Nay,” said my father ; “ after all, they are the.olTend- 
ing party in this case, and so ought to be the principal 
victims. Besides, I believe I know most of them by 


A FAMILY PIOTURE. 


29 


heart. But, in truth, we are only entering all our effects, 
to be sure (added my father proudly) that, come what 
may, we are not dishonored.’' 

“Humor him,” whispered Squills; “we will save the 
books.” Then he added aloud, as he laid finger and 
tl umb on my pulse, “One, two, three, about seventy — 
capital pulse — soft and full — he can bear the whole: 
let us administer it.” 

My father nodded — “ Certainly. But, Pisistratus, we 
must manage your dear mother. Why she should think 
of blaming herself, because poor Jack took wrong ways 
to enrich us, I cannot understand. But as I have had 
occasion before to remark. Sphinx is a noun feminine. ” 

My poor father 1 that was a vain struggle for thy 
wonted innocent humor. The lips quivered. 

Then the story came out. It seems that, when it was 
resolved to undertake the publication of the Literary 
Times, a certain number of shareholders had been got 
together by the indefatigable energies of Uncle Jack ; 
and in the deed of association and partnership, my 
father’s name figured conspicuously as the holder of a 
fourth of this joint property. If in this my father had 
committed some imprudence, he had at least done nothing 
that, according to the ordinary calculations of a secluded 
student, could become ruinous. But, just at the time 
when we were in the hurry of leafing town. Jack had 
represented to my father that it might be necessary to 
alter a little the plan of the paper; and, in order to 
allure a larger circle of readers, touch somewhat on the 
3 * 


so 


THE OAXTONS: 


more vulgar news and interests of the day. A change 
of plan might involve a change of title ; and he suggested 
to my father the expediency of leaving the smooth hands 
of Mr. Tibbets altogether unfettered, as to the technical 
name and precise form of the publication. To this my 
father had unwittingly assented, on hearing that the 
other shareholders would do the same. Mr. Peck, a 
printer of considerable opulence, and highly respectable 
name, had been found to advance the sum necessary for 
the publication of the earlier numbers, upon the guarantee 
of the said act of partnership and the additional security 
of my father’s signature to a document, authorising Mr. 
Tibbets to make any change in the form or title of the 
periodical that might be judged advisable, concurrent 
with the consent of the other shareholders. 

Now it seems that Mr. Peck had, in his precious con- 
ferences with Mr. Tibbets, thrown much cold water on 
the idea of the Literary Times, and had suggested 
something that should “catch the monied public,” — the 
fact being, as was afterwards discovered, that the printer, 
whose spirit of enterprise was congenial to Uncle Jack’s, 
had shares in three or four speculations, to which he was 
naturally glad of an opportunity to invite the attention 
of the public. In a word, no sooner was my poor 
father’s back turned, than the Literary Times was 
dropped incontinently, and Mr. Peck and Mr. Tibbets 
began to concentrate their luminous notions into that 
brilliant and comet-like apparition which ultimately 
blazed forth under the title of The Capitalist. 


A FAMILY PICTUBE. 


SI 


From this change of enterprise the more prudent and 
responsible of the original shareholders had altogether 
withdrawn. A majority, indeed, were left ; but the 
greater part of those were shareholders of that kind mos 
amenable to the influences of Uncle Jack, and willing to 
be shareholders in anything, since as yet they were 
possessors of nothing. 

Assured of my father’s responsibility, the adventurous 
Peck put plenty of spirit into the first launch of The 
Capitalist. All the walls were placarded with its 
announcements ; circular advertisements ran from one 
end of the kingdom to the other. Agents were engaged, 
correspondents levied en masse. The invasion of Xerxes 
on the Greeks was not more munificently provided for 
than that of The Capitalist upon the credulity and 
avarice of mankind. 

But as Providence bestows upon fishes the instrument 
of fins, whereby they balance and direct their movements, 
however rapid and erratic, through the pathless deeps ; 
BO to the cold-blooded creatures of our own species — 
that may be classed under the genus money-makers — 
the same protective power accords the fin-like properties 
of prudence and caution, wherewith your true money- 
getter buoys and guides himself majestically through the 
great seas of speculation. In short, the fishes the net 
was cast for were all scared from the surface at the first 
splash. They came round and smelt at the mesh with 
their sharp bottle-noses, and then, plying those invalu- 
able fins, made off as fast as they could — plunging into 


32 


THE CAXTONS: 


the mud — hiding themselves under rocks and coral 
banks. Metaphor apart, the capitalists buttoned up 
their pockets, and would have nothing to say to their 
namesake. 

Not a word of this change, so abhorrent to all the 
notions of poor Augustine Caxton, had been breathed 
to him by Peck or Tibbets. He ate, and slept, and 
worked at the Great Book, occasionally wondering why 
he had not heard of the advent of the Literary Times, 
unconscious of all the awful responsibilities which The 
Capitalist was entailing on him ; — knowing no more of 
The Capitalist than he did of the last loan of the 
Rothschilds. 

Difficult was it for all other human nature, save my 
father’s, not to breathe an indignant anathema on the 
scheming head of the brother-in-law who had thus vio- 
lated the most sacred obligations of trust and kindred, 
and so entangled an unsuspecting recluse. But, to give 
even Jack Tibbets his due, he had firmly convinced him- 
self that The Capitalist would make my father’s .fortune ; 
and if he did not announce to him the strange and 
anomalous development into which the original sleeping 
chrysalis of the Literary Times had taken portentous 
wing, it was purely and wholly in the knowledge that my 
father’s “prejudices,” as he termed them, would stand in 
the way of his becoming a Croesus. And, in fact, Uncle 
Jack had believed so heartily in his own project, that he 
had put himself thoroughly into Mr. Peck’s power, signed 
bills, in his own name, to some fabulous amount, and was 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


3b 


actually now in the Fleet, whence his penitential and 
despairing .confession was dated, arriving simultaneously 
with a short letter from Mr. Peck, wherein that respect- 
able printer apprised my father that he had continued, 
at his own risk, the publication of The Capitalist, as far 
as a prudent care for his family would permit ; that he 
need not say that a new daily journal was a very vast 
experiment; that the expense of such a paper as The 
Capitalist was immeasurably greater than that of a mere 
literary periodical, as originally suggested ; and that now, 
being constrained to come upon the shareholders for the 
sums he had advanced, amounting to several thousands, 
he requested my father to settle with him immediately — 
delicately implying that Mr. Caxton himself might settle 
as he could with the other shareholders, most of whom, 
he grieved to add, he had been milled by Mr. Tibbets 
into believing to be men of substance, when in reality 
they were men of straw! 

Nor was this all the evil. The “Great Anti-Book- 
seller Publishing Society” — which had maintained a 
struggling existence — evinced by advertisements of sun- 
dry forthcoming works of solid interest and enduring 
nature, wherein, out of a long list, amidst a pompous 
array of “Poems;” “Dramas not intended for the 
Stage ; ” “ Essays by Phileutheros, Philanthropes, Philo- 
polis, Philodemus, and Philalethes ; ” stood prominently 
forth, “The History of Human Error, Yols. I. and II., 
quarto, with illustrations,” — the “Anti-Bookseller So- 
r*.iety,” I say, that had hitherto evinced nascent and 

c 


34 


THE CAXTONS : 


budding life by these exfoliations from its slender stem 
died of a sudden blight, the moment its sun, in. the shape 
of Uncle Jack, set in the Cimmerian regions of the Fleet; 
and a polite letter from another printer (0 William C ax- 
ton, William Caxton I — fatal progenitor) I informing my 
father of this event, stated complimentarily that it was 
to him, “as the most respectable member of the Asso* 
ciation,” that the said printer would be compelled to look 
for expenses incurred, not only in the very 'costly edition 
of the “ History of Human Error,” but for those incurred 
in the print and paper devoted to “ Poems,” “ Dramas not 
intended for the Stage,” “ Essays by Phileutheros, Phi- 
lanthropes, Philopolis, Philodemus, and Philalethes,” 
with sundry other works, no doubt of a very valuable 
nature, but in which a considerable loss, in a pecuniary 
point of view, must be necessarily expected. 

I own that, as soon as I had mastered the above agree- 
able facts, and ascertained from Mr. Squills that my 
father really did seem to have rendered himself legally 
liable to these demands, I leant back in my chair, stunned 
and bewildered. 

“So you see,” said my father, “that as yet we are 
contending with monsters in the dark — in the dark all 
monsters look larger and uglier. Even Augustus Caesar, 
though certainly he had never scrupled to make as many 
ghosts as suited his convenience, did not like the chance 
of a visit from them, and never sat alone in tenehris. 
What the amount of the sums claimed from me may be, 
we know not; what may be gained by the other share* 


A FAMILY PICT URE. 


35 


holders, is equally obscure and undefined. But the first 
thing to do is to get poor Jack out of prison.’^ 

“ Uncle Jack out of prison ! ” exclaimed I : “ surely, 
sir, that is carrying forgiveness too far.” 

“ Why, he would not have been in prison, if I had not 
been so blindly forgetful of his weakness, poor man I I 
ought to have known better. But my vanity misled me ; 
I must needs publish a great book, as if (said Mr. Cax- 
ton, looking round the shelves) there were not great 
books enough in the world 1 I must needs, too, think 
of advancing and circulating knowledge in the form of a 
journal — I, who had not knowledge enough of the 
character of my own brother-in-law to keep myself from 
ruin I Come what will, I should think myself the meanest 
of men to let that poor creature, whom I ought to have 
considered as a monomaniac, rot in prison, because I, 
Austin Caxton, wanted common sense. And (concluded 
my father, resolutely), he is your mother’s brother, Pisis- 
tratus. I should have gone to town at once ; but, hear- 
ing that my wife had written to you, I waited till I could 
leave her to the companionship of hope and comfort — 
two blessings that smile upon every mother in the face 
of a son like you. To-morrow I go.” 

“ Not a bit of it,” said Mr. Squills, firmly ; ' “ as your 
medical adviser, I forbid you to leave the house for the 
next six days.” 


86 


THE CAXTONS ; 


CHAPTER II. 

Sir,’’ continued Mr. Squills, biting off the end of a 
tigar which he pulled from his pocket, “ you concede to 
me that it is a very important business on which you pro- 
pose to go to London.” 

“ Of that there is no doubt,” replied my father. 

“And the doing of business well or ill entirely depends 
upon the habit of body 1 ” cried Mr. Squills, triumphantly. 
“ Do you know, Mr. Caxton, that while you are looking 
so calm, and talking so quietly — just on purpose to 
sustain your son and delude your wife — do you know 
that your pulse, which is naturally little more than sixty, 
is nearly a hundred ? Do you know, sir, that your 
mucous membranes are in a state of high irritation, 
apparent by the papillce at the tip of your tongue. 
And if, with a pulse like this, and a tongue like that, 
you think of settling money matters with a set of sharp- 
witted tradesmen, all I can say is, that you are a ruined 
man.” 

“But” — began my father. 

“Did not Squire Rollick,” pursued Mr. Squills 

“ Squire Rollick, the hardest head at a bargain I know 
of — did not Squire Rollick sell that pretty little farm of 
his, Scrauny Holt, for thirty i)er cent, below its value f 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


31 


And wliat was the cause, sir ? — the whole country was 
in amaze 1 — what was the cause, but an incipient simmer- 
ing attack of the yellow jaundice, which made him take 
a gloomy view of human life, and the agricultural inte- 
rest? On the other hand, did not Lawyer Cool, the 
most prudent man in the three kingdoms — Lawyer Cool, 
who was so methodical, that all the clocks in the county 
were set by his watch — plunge one morning head over 
heels into a frantic speculation for cultivating the bogs 
in Ireland (his watch did not go right for the next three 
months, which made our whole shire an hour in advance 
of the rest of England) ! And what was the cause of 
that nobody knew, till I was called in, and found the 
cerebral membrane in a state of acute irritation, probably 
just in the region of h-s acquisitiveness and ideality. 
No, Mr. Caxton, you will stay at home, and take a sooth- 
ing preparation I shall send you, of lettuce-leaves and 
marsh-mallows. But I,” continued Squills, lighting his 
cigar, and taking two determined whiffs — “ but I will go 
up to town and settle the business for you, and take with 
me this young gentleman, whose digestive functions are 
just in a state to deal safely with those horrible elements 
of dyspepsia — the L. S. D.” 

As he spoke, Mr. Squills set his foot significantly 
upon mine. 

“But,” resumed my father, mildly, “though I thank 
you very much. Squills, for your kind offer, 1 do not 
recognise the necessity of accepting it. I am not so bad 
a philosopher as you seem to imagine ; and the blow 1 

IT. — 4 2b 


88 


THE C AXTONS: 


have received has not so deranged my physical organiza* 
tion as to render me unfit to transact my alTairs.” 

“ Hum I ” grunted Squills, starting up and seizing my 
fatlier’s pulse ; “ ninety-six — ninety-six if a beat ! And 
tlie tongue, sir I ” 

“ Pshaw ! quoth my father, “ you have not even seen 
my tongue I ” 

“No need of that, I know what it is by the state 
of the eyelids — tip scarlet, sides rough as a nutmeg- 
grater I ” 

“ Pshaw ! ” again said my father, this time impatiently. 

“Well,” said Squills, solemnly, “it is my duty to say 
(here my mother entered, to tell me that supper was 
ready), and I say it to you, Mrs. Caxton, and to you, 
Mr. Pisistratus Caxton, as the parties most nearly inte- 
rested, that if you, sir, go to London upon this matter, 
I’ll not answer for the consequences.” 

“ Oh ! Austin, Austin,” cried my mother, running up 
and throwing her arms round my father’s neck ; while T, 
little less alarmed by Squills’ serious tone and aspect, 
represented strongly the inutility of Mr. Gaxton’s per- 
sonal interference at the present moment. All he could 
do on arriving in town would be to put the matter inta 
the hands of a good lawyer, and that we could do for 
him ; it would be time enough to send for him when the 
extent of the mischief done was more clearly ascertained. 
Meanwhile, Squills griped my father’s pulse, and my 
mother hung on his nock. 

“Ninety-six — ninety-seven!” groaned Squills, in e 
hollow voice. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


39 


“ I don’t believe it I ” cried my father, almost in a 
passion — “never better nor cooler in my life.” 

“And the tongue — look at his tongue, Mrs. Caxton 
— a tongue, ma’am, so bright that you could see to read 
by it I ” 

“ Oh I Austin, Austin ! ” 

“ My dear, it is not my tongue that is in fault, I assure 
you,” said my father, speaking through his teeth ; “and 
the man knows no more of my tongue than he does of 
the Mysteries of Eleusis.” 

“ Put it out then,” exclaimed Squills, “and if he be not 
as I say, you have my leave to go to London, and throw 
your whole fortune into the two great pits you have dug 
for it. Put it out 1 ” 

“ Mr. Squills I ” said my father, coloring — “ Mr. Squills, 
for shame ! ” 

“Dear, dear, Austin I your hand is so hot — you are 
feverish, I am sure.” 

“Not a bit of it.” 

“But, sir, only just gratify Mr. Squills,” said I, coax- 
ingly. 

“ There, there ! ” said my father, fairly baited into sub 
mission, and shyly exhibiting for a moment the extremest 
eid of the vanquished organ of eloquence. 

Squills darted forward his lynx-like eyes. “ Red as a 
lobster, and rough as a gooseberry-bush I ” cried Squills, 
m a tone of savage joy. 


40 


THE CAXTONS: 


CHAPTER III. 

How was it possible for one poor tongue, so reviled 
and persecuted, so humbled, insulted, and triumphed over 
— to resist three tongues in league against it ? 

Finally, my father yielded, and Squills, in high spirits, 
declared, that he would go to supper with me, to see 
that I ate nothing that could tend to discredit his reliance 
on my system. Leaving my mother still with her Austin, 
the good surgeon then took my arm, and, as soon as we 
were in the next room, shut the door carefully, wiped his 
forehead, and said — “I think we have saved him 1 

“Would it really, then, have injured my father so 
much ? ” 

“ So much 1 — why, you foolish young man, don^t you 
see that, with his ignorance of business, where he himself 
is concerned — though for any other one’s business, 
neither Rollick nor Cool hag a better judgment — and 
with his d — d Quixotic spirit of honor worked up into a 
state of excitement, he would have rushed to Mr. Tibbets ; 
and exclaimed, ‘ How much do you owe ? there it is ! ’ 
settled in the same way with these printers, and come 
back without a sixpence ; whereas you and I can look 
coolly about us, and reduce the inflammation to tho 
minimum 1 ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


41 


‘‘I see, and thank you heartily, Squills.” 

“ Besides,” said the surgeon, with more feeling, yout 
father has really been making a noble effort over himself. 
He suffers more than you would think — not for himself 
(for I do believe that, if he were alone in the world, he 
would be quite contented if he could save fifty pounds a- 
year and his books,) but for your mother and yourself ; 
and a fresh access of emotional excitement, all the 
nervous anxiety of a journey to London on such a 
business might have ended in a paralytic or epileptic 
affection. Now we have him here snug; and the worsts 
news we can give him will be better than what he will 
make up his mind for. But you don’t eat.” 

“ Eat I How can I ? My poor father I ” 

“The effect of grief. upon the gastric juices, through 
the nervous system, is very remarkable,” said Mr. Squills, 
philosophically, and helping himself to a broiled bone ; 
“it increases the thirst, while it takes away hunger. No 
— don’t touch port ! — heating ! Sherry and water ” 


CHAPTER ly. 

Tee house-door had closed upon Mr. Squills — thak 
gentleman having promised to breakfast with me the 
nfext morning, so that we might take the coach from our 
gate — and I remained alone, seated by the supper-table, 
and revolving all I had heard, when my father walked in, 
4 * 


42 


THE CAXT0N8 : 


“ Pisistratus,” said he gravely, and looking round hini; 
your mother 1 — suppose the worst — your first care, 
then, must be to try and secure something for her. You 
and I are men — we can never want, while we have health 
of mind and body ; but a woman — and if anything 
happens to me — ” 

My father’s lip writhed as it uttered these brief 
sentences. 

“ My dear, dear father I ” said I, suppressing my tears 
with difficulty, “ all evils, as you yourself said, look worse 
/ by anticipation. It is impossible that your whole fortune 
can be involved. The newspaper did not run many 
weeks : and only the first volume of your work is printed. 
Besides, there must be other shareholders who will pay 
their quota. Believe me, I feel . sanguine as to the result 
of my embassy. As for my poor mother, it is not the 
loss of fortune that will wound her — depend on it, she 
thinks very little of that; it is the loss of your con- 
fidence.” 

“ My confidence 1 ” 

‘‘Ah yes ! tell her all your fears, as your hopes. Do 
not let your afiTectionate pity exclude her from one corner 
of your heart.” 

“ It is that — it is that, Austin — my husband — my joy 

my pride — my soul — my all I ” cried a soft broken voice. 

My mother had crept in unobserved by us. 

My father looked at us both, and the tears which haa 
before stood in his eyes forced their way. Then opening 
his arms, into which his Kitty threw herself joyfully — lie 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


43 


lifted those moist eyes upward, and, by the movement of 
his lips, I saw that he thanked God. 

I stole out of the room. I felt that those two hearts 
should be left to beat and to blend alone. And from that 
hour, I am convinced that Augustine Caxton acquired a 
stouter philosophy than that of the stoics. The fortitude 
that concealed pain was no longer needed, for the pain 
was no longer felt. 


CHAPTER Y. 

Mr. Squills and I performed our journey without 
adventure, and, as we were not alone on the coach, with 
little conversation. We put up at a small inn in the City, 
and the next morning I sallied forth to see Trevanion — 
for we agreed that he would be the best person to advise 
us. But, on arriving at St. James’s Square, I had the 
disappointment of hearing that the whole family had gone 
to Paris three days before, and were not expected to 
return till the meeting of Parliament. 

This was a sad discouragement, for I had counted 
much on Trevanion ’s clear head, and that extraordinary 
range of accomplishment in all matters of business — all 
that related to practical life — which my old patron pre- 
eminently possessed. The next thing would be to find 
Trevanion’s lawyer (for Trevanion was one of those men 
whose solicitors are sure to be able and active). But the 
fact was, that he left so little to lawyers, that he had 


44 


THE CAXTONS: 


never had occasion to communicate with one since I had 
known him ; and I was therefore in ignorance of the very 
name of his solicitor ; nor could the porter, who was 
left in charge of the house, enlighten me. Luckily, I 
bethought myself of Sir Sedley Beaudesert, who could 
scarcely fail to give me the information required, and who, 
at all events, might recommend to me some other lawyer 
So to him I went. 

I found Sir Sedley at breakfast with a young gentle- 
man who seemed about twenty. The good baronet was 
delighted to see me ; but I thought it was with a little 
confusion, rare to his cordial ease, that he presented me 
to his cousin. Lord Castleton. It was a name familiar 
to me, though I had never before met its patrician owner. 

The Marquis of Castleton was indeed a subject of envy 
to young idlers, and afforded a theme of interest to grey- 
beard politicians. Often have I heard of “that lucky 
fellow Castleton,’’ who, when of age, would step into one 
of those colossal fortunes which would realise the dreams 
of Aladdin — a fortune that had been out to nurse since 
his minority. Often have I heard graver gossips wonder 
whether Castleton would take any active part in public 
life — whether he would keep up the family influence. 
His mother (still alive) was a superior woman, and had 
devoted herself, from his childhood, to supply a father’s 
loss, and fit him for his great position. It was said that 
he was clever — had been educated by a tutor of great 
academic distinction, and was reading for a double first 
class at Oxford. This young marquis was indeed th«> 


A FAMILY PICTURE 


4 £ 

head of one of those few houses still left in England that 
retain feudal importance. He was important, not only 
from his rank and his vast fortune, but from an immense 
circle of powerful connections ; from the ability of his 
two predecessors, who had been keen politicians and 
cabinet-ministers ; from the prestige they had bequeathed 
to his name ; from the peculiar nature of his property, 
which gave him the returning interest in no less than six 
parliamentary seats in Great Britain and Ireland — besides 
the indirect ascendency which the head of the Castletons 
had always exercised over many powerful and noble allies 
of that princely house. I was not aware that he was 
related to Sir Sedley, whose world of action was so remote 
from politics ; and it was with some surprise that I now 
heard that announcement, and certainly with some interest 
that I, perhaps from the verge of poverty, gazed on this 
young heir of fabulous El Dorados. 

It was easy to see that Lord Castleton had been brought 
up with a careful knowledge of his future greatness, and 
its serious responsibilities. He stood immeasurably aloof 
from all the affectations common to the youth of minor 
patricians. He had not been taught to value himself on 
the cut of a coat, or the shape of a hat. His world was 
far above St. James’s-street and the clubs. He was 
dressed plainly, though in a style peculiar to himself — a 
white neck-cloth (which was not at that day quite so 
uncommon for morning use as it is now), trowsers without 
straps, thin shoes and gaiters. In his manner there was 
nothing of the supercilious apathy which characterises the 


16 


THE CAXTONSr 


dand} introduced to some one whom he doubts if he can 
nod to from the bow- window at White’s — none of such 
Fulgar coxcombries had Lord Castleton ; and yet a young 
gentleman more emphatically coxcomb it was impossible 
to see. He had been told, no doubt, that, as the head 
of a house which was almost in itself a party in the state, 
he should be bland and civil to all men ; and this duty 
being grafted upon a nature singularly cold and unsocial, 
gave to his politeness something so stiff, yet so con- 
descending, that it brought the blood to one’s cheek — 
though the momentary anger was counterbalanced by a 
sense of the almost ludicrous contrast between this 
gracious majesty of deportment, and the insignificant 
figure, with the boyish beardless face, by which it was 
assumed. Lord Castleton did not content himself with a 
mere bow at our introduction. Much to my wonder how 
he came by the information he displayed, he made me a 
little speech after the manner of Louis XIY. to a 
provincial noble — studiously modelled upon that royal 
maxim of urbane policy which instructs a king that he 
should know something of the birth, parentage, and 
family, of his meanest gentleman. It was a little speech, 
in which my father’s learning, and my uncle’s services, 
and the amiable qualities of your humble servant, were 
neatly interwoven — delivered in a falsetto tone, as if 
learned by heart, though it must have been necessarily 
impromptu ; and then, reseating himself, he made a 
gracious motion of the head and hand, as if to authorise 
me to do the same 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


41 


Conversation succeeded, by galvanic jerks and spas 
modic starts — a conversation that Lord Castleton con 
trived to tug so completely out of poor Sir Sedley’s 
ordinary course of small and polished small-talk, that 
that charming personage, accustomed, as he well deserved, 
to be Coryphaeus at his own table, was completely 
silenced. With his light reading, his rich stores of 
anecdote, his good-humored knowledge of the drawing- 
room world, he had scarce a word that would fit into the 
great, rough, serious matters which Lord Castleton threw 
upon the table, as he nibbled his toast. Nothing but the 
most grave and practical subjects of human interest 
seemed to attract this future leader of mankind. The 
fact is that Lord Castleton had been taught everything 
that relates to property — (a knowledge which embraces 
a very wide circumference.) It had been said to him, 
“You will be an immense proprietor — knowledge is 
essential to your self-preservation. You will be puzzled, 
bubbled, ridiculed, duped every day of your life, if you 
do not make yourself acquainted *with all by which 
property is assailed or defended, impoverished or in- 
creased. You have a vast stake in the country — you 
must learn all the interests of Europe — nay, of the 
civilized world — for those interests react on the country, 
and the interests of the country are of the greatest pos- 
sible consequence to the interests of the Marquis of 
Castleton.” Thus the state of the Continent — the 
policy of Metternich — the condition of the Papacy — 
the growth of Dissent — the proper mode of dealing with 


43 


THE CAXTONS: 


the general spirit of Democracy, which was the epidemic 
of European monarchies — the relative proportions of 
the agricultural and manufacturing population — corn- 
laws, currency, and the laws that regulate wages — a 
criticism on the leading speakers of the House of 
Commons, with some discursive observations on the im- 
portance of fattening cattle — the introduction of flax 
into Ireland — emigration — the condition of the poor — 
the doctrines of Mr. Owen — the pathology of potatoes ; 
the connection between potatoes, pauperism, and patriot- 
ism ; these, and such-like stupendous subjects for reflec- 
tion — all branching more or less intricately from the 
single idea of the Castleton property — the young lord 
discussed and disposed of in half-a-dozen prim, poised 
sentences — evincing, I must say in justice, no incon- 
siderable information, and a mighty solemn turn of mind. 
The oddity was, that the subjects so selected and treated 
should not come rather from some young barrister, oi 
mature political economist, than from so gorgeous a lily 
of the field. Of a ‘man less elevated in rank one would 
certainly have said — “ Cleverish, but a prig ; but there 
really was something so respectable in a personage born 
to such fortunes, and having nothing to do but to bask 
In the sunshine, voluntarily taking such pains with him- 
self, and condescending to identify his own interests — 
the interests of the Castleton property — with the con- 
cerns of his lesser fellow-mortals, that one felt the young 
marquis had in him the stuff to become a very consider 
able man. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


4 ^ 


Poor Sir Sedley, to whom all these matters were as 
uafamiliar as the theology of the Taluiid, after some ^ain 
efforts to slide the conversation into easier gTO..>ves, 
fairly gave in, and, with a compassionate smile on his 
handsome countenance, took refuge in his easy-chiir and 
iho contemplation of his snuff-bux. 

At last, to our great relief, the servant announced 
Lord Castleton’s carriage : and with another speech of 
overpowering affability to me, and a cold shake of the 
hand to Sir Sedley, Lord Castieton went his way. 

The breakfast-parlor looked on the street, and 1 
turned mechanically to the window as Sir Sedley followed 
his guest out of the room. A travelling-carriage with 
four post-horses was at the door ; and a servant, who 
looked like a foreigner, was in waiting with his master’s 
cloak. As I saw Lord Castieton step into the street, 
and wrap himself in his costly mantle lined with sables, I 
observed, more than I had while he was in the room, the 
enervate slightness of his frail form, and the more than 
paleness of his thin joyless face ; and then, instead of 
envy, I felt compassion for the owner of all this pomp 
and grandeur — felt that I would not have exchanged my 
haidy health, and easy humor, and vivid capacities of 
enjoyment in things the slightest and most within the 
reach of all men, for the wealth and greatness which that 
poor youth perhaps deserved the more for putting them 
so litile t: the service of pleasure. 

“Well,’ said Sir Sedley, “and what do you think of 
Him ? ” 

IT. — 5 


D 


50 


THE OAXTONS: 


“ He is just the sort of man Trevanion would like,’^ 
said I, evasively. 

“ That is true,” answered Sir Sedley, in a serious tone 
of voice, and looking at me somewhat earnestly. “ Have 
you heard ? — but no, you cannot have heard yet.” 

‘‘ Heard what ? ” 

“ My dear young friend,” said the kindest and most 
delicate of all fine gentlemen, sauntering away that he 
might not observe the emotion he caused, “Lord Castle- 
ton is going to Paris to join the Trevanions. The object 
Lady Ellinor has had at heart for many a long year is 
won, and our pretty Fanny will be Marchioness of Cas- 
tleton when her betrothed is of age — that is, in six 
months. The two mothers have settled it all between 
them.” 

I made no answer, but continued to look out of the 
window. 

“ This alliance,” resumed Sir Sedley, “ was all that 
was wanting to assure Trevanion ’s position. When 
parliament meets, he will have some great office. Poor 
man I how I shall pity him I It is extraordinary to me,” 
continued Sir Sedley, benevolently 'going on, that I 
might have full time to recover myself, “ how contagious 
that disease called ‘ business ’ is in our foggy England ! 
Not only Trevanion, you see, has the complaint in its 
very worst and most complicated form, but that poor 
dear cousin of mine, who is so young (here Sir Sedley 
sighed,) and might enjoy himself so much, is worse than 
you were when Trevanion was fagging you to death 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


51 


Bat, to be sure, a great name and position, like Castle- 
ton’s, must be a very heavy affliction to a conscientious 
mind. Yon see how the sense of its responsibilities has 
aged him already — positively, two great wrinkles under 
his eyes. Well, after all, I admire him, and respect his 
tutor ; a soil naturally very thin, I suspect, has been most 
carefully cultivated ; and Castleton, with Trevanion’s help, 
will be the first man in the peerage — prime minister some 
day, I dare say. And when I think of it, how grateful 
I ought to feel to his father and mother, who produced 
him quite in their old age ; for, if he had not been born, 
I should have been the most miserable of men — yes, 
positively, that horrible marquisate would have come to 
me ! I never think over Horace Walpole’s regrets, when 
he got the earldom of Orford, without the deepest 
sympathy, and without a shudder at the thought of what 
my dear Lady Castleton was kind enough to save me 
from — all owing to the Ems waters, after twenty years’ 
marriage 1 Well, my young friend, and how are all at 
home ? ” 

As when, some notable performer not having yet 
arrived behind the scenes, or having to change his dress, 
or not having yet quite recovered an unlucky extra 
tumbler of exciting fluids — and the green curtain has 
therefore unduly delayed its ascent — you perceive that 
the thorough-bass in the orchestra charitably devotes 
himself to a prelude of astonishing prolixity, calling in 
Lodoiska or Der Freischutz to beguile the time, and 
allow the procrastinating histrio leisure sufficient to draw 


62 


THE CAXTONS; 


on Ms flesh-colored pantaloons, and give himself the 
proper complexion for a Coriolanus or Macbeth — even 
so had Sir Sedley made that long speech, requiring no 
rejoinder, till he saw the time had arrived when he could 
artfully close with the flourish of a final interrogative, in 
order to give poor Pisistratus Caxton all preparation to 
compose himself and step forward. There is certainly 
something of exquisite kindness, and thoughtful benevo- 
lence, in that rarest of gifts , — fine breeding; and when 
now, re-manned and resolute, I turned round and saw 
Sir Sedley’s soft blue eye shyly, but benignantly, turned 
to me — while, with a grace no other snuflf-taker ever 
had since the days of Pope, he gently proceeded to re- 
fresh himself by a pinch of the celebrated Beaudesert 
mixture — I felt my heart as gratefully moved towards 
him as if he had conferred on me some colossal obliga- 
tion. And this crowning question — “And how are ah 
at home ? ” restored me entirely to my self-possession, 
and for the moment distracted the bitter current of my 
thoughts. 

I replied by a brief statement of my father’s involve- 
ment, disguising our apprehensions as to its extent, 
speaking of it rather as an annoyance than a possible 
cause of ruin, and ended by asking Sir Sedley to give me 
the address of Trevanion’s lawyer. 

The good baronet listened with great attention ; and 
that quick penetration which belongs to a man of the 
world enabled him to detect, that I had smoothed over 
matters more than became a faithful narrator. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


53 


He shook his head, and, seating himself on the sofa, 
motioned me to come to his side ; then, leaning his arm 
over iny shoulder, he said in his seductive, winning way — 
“We two young fellows should understand each other 
when we talk of money matters. I can say to you w^hat 
I could not say to my respectable senior — by three 
years ; your excellent father. Frankly, then, I suspect 
this is a bad business. I know little about newspapers, 
except that I have to subscribe to one in my county, 
which costs me a small income ; but I know that a 
London daily paper might ruin a man in a few weeks. 
And as for shareholders, my dear Caxton, I was once 
teased into being a shareholder in a canal that ran 
through my property, and ultimately ran off with 
30,000/. of it I The other shareholders w^ere all drowned 
in the canal, like Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea. 
But your father is a great scholar, and must not be 
plagued with such matters. 1 owe him a great deal. 
He was very kind to me at Cambridge, and gave me the 
taste for reading, to which I owe the pleasantest hours 
of my life. So, when you and the lawyers have found 
out what the extent of the mischief is, you and I must 
see how we can best settle it. What the deuce ! my 
young friend — I have no ‘ encumbrances,’ as the servants, 
with great want of politeness, call wives and children. 
And I am not a miserable great landed millionaire, like 
that poor dear Castleton, who owes so many duties to 
society that he can’t spend a shilling, except in a grand 
way, and purely to benefit the public. So go, my boy, 
5* .2c 


54 


THE CAXTONS: 


to Trevanion’s lawyer : he is mine too. Clever fellow — ■ 
sharp as a needle, Mr. Pike, in Great Ormond Street — 
name on a brass plate ; and when he has settled the 
amount, we young scapegraces will help each other, 
without a word to the old folks.” 

What good it does to a man, throughout life, to meet 
kindness and generosity like this in his youth I 

I need not say that I was too faithful a representative 
of my father’s scholarly pride, and susceptible independ- 
ence of spirit, to accept this proposal ; and probably Sir 
Sedley, rich and liberal as he was, did not dream of the 
extent to which his proposal might involve him. But 
I expressed my gratitude, so as to please and move this 
last relic of the De Coverleys, and went from his house 
straight to Mr. Pike’s office, with a little note of in- 
troduction from Sir Sedley. I found Mr. Pike exactly 
the man I had anticipated from Trevanion’s character — 
short, quick, intelligent, in question and answer ; im- 
posing, and somewhat domineering, in manner — not 
overcrowded with business, but with enough for ex- 
perience and respectability ; neither young nor old ; 
neither a pedantic machine of parchment, nor a jaunty 
off-hand coxcomb of West End manners. 

“ It is an ugly affair,” said he, “ but one that requires 
management. Leave .it all in my hands for three days. 
Don’t go near Mr. Tibbets, nor Mr. Peck : and on 
Saturday next, at two o’clock, if you will call here, you 
shall know my opinion of the whole matter.” With that, 
Mr. Pike glanced at the clock, and I took up my hat and 
went. 


A FAMILY PICTURE: 


55 


There is no place more delightful than a great capital, 
if you are comfortably settled in it — have arranged the 
methodical disposal of your time, and know how to take 
business and pleasure in due proportions. But a flying 
visit to a great capital, in an unsettled, unsatisfactory 
way — at an inn — an inn in the City, too — with a great 
worrying load of business on your mind, of which you are 
to hear no more for three days ; and an aching, jealous, 
miserable sorrow at the heart, such as I had — leaving 
you no labor to pursue, and no pleasure that you have 
tbe heart to share in — oh, a great capital then is indeed 
forlorn, wearisome, and oppressive I It is the Castle of 
Indolence, not as Thomson built it, but as Beckford drew 
in his Hall of Eblis — a wandering up and down, to and 
fro — a great awful space, with your hand pressed to 
your heart ; and — oh for a rush on some half-tame horse, 
through the measureless green wastes of Australia I 
That is the place for a man who has no home in the 
Babel, and whose hand is ever pressing to his heart, with 
its dull, burning pain. 

Mr. Squills decoyed me the second evening into one 
of the small theatres ; and very heartily did Mr. Squills 
enjoy all he saw, and all he heard. And while, with a 
convulsive effort of the jaws, I was trying to laugh too, 
suddenly in one of the actors, who was performing the 
worshipful part of a parish beadle, I recognised a face 
that I had seen before. Five minutes afterwards I had 
disappeared from the side of Squills, and was amidst that 
btrange world — behind the scenes. 


56 


THE CAXTONS: 


My beadle was much too busy and important to allow 
me a good opportunity to accost him, till the piece was 
over. I then seized hold of him, as he was amicably 
sharing a pot of porter with a gentleman in black shorts 
and a laced waistcoat, who was to play the part of a 
broken-hearted father in the Domestic Drama in Three 
Acts, that would conclude the amusements of the evening. 

“ Excuse me,” said I apologetically ; “ but as the Swan 
pertinently observes, — ‘ Should auld acquaintance be 
forgot ? ’ ” 

“The Swan, sir!” cried the beadle aghast — “the 
Swan never demeaned himself by such d — d broad Scotch 
as that I ” 

“ The Tweed has its swans as well as the Avon, Mr. 
Peacock.” 

“ St — st — hush — hush — h — u — sh I ” whispered the 
beadle in great alarm, and eyeing me, with savage obser- 
vation, under his corked eyebrows. Then, taking me by 
the arm, he jerked me away. When he had got as far 
as the narrow limits of that little stage would allow, Mr. 
Peacock said — 

“ Sir, you have the advantage of me ; I don’t remember 
you. Ah ! you need not look ! — by gad, sir, I am not 
to be bullied — it was all fair play. If you will play with 
gentlemen, sir, you must run the consequences.” 

I hastened to appease the worthy man. 

“ Indeed, Mr. Peacock, if you remember, I refused to 
play with you ; and, so far from wishing to offend you, I 
now come on purpose to compliment you on your excellent 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 5^ 

actiog, and to inquire if you have heard anything lately 
of your young friend, Mr. Vivian. ” 

“ Vivian ? — never heard the name, sir. Vivian ! Pooh, 
you are trying to hoax me ; very good ! ” 

“I assure you, Mr. Peac” — 

“St — st — How the deuce did you know that I was 
once called Peac — that is, people called me Peac — A 
friendly nickname, no more — drop it, sir, or you ‘ touch 
me with noble anger ! ’ ” 

“ Well, well ; ‘ the rose by any name will smell as sweet,’ 
as the Swan, this time at least judiciously, observes. But, 
Mr. Vivian, too, seems to have other names at his dis- 
posal. I mean a young, dark, handsome man — or rather 
boy — with whom I met you in company by the roadside, 
one morning.” 

“ 0 — h,”said Mr. Peacock, looking much relieved, “ I • 
know whom you mean, though I don’t remember to have 
had the pleasure of seeing you before. No ; I have not 
heard anything of the young man lately. I wish I did 
know something of him. He was a ‘gentleman in my 
own way.’ Sweet Will has hit him off to a hair I — 

‘ The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword.’ 

Sucli a hand with a cue ! — you should have seen him 
seek the ‘bubble reputation at the ca? 2 non’s mouth.’ I 
may say,” continued Mr. Peacock, emphatically,' “that 
he was a regular trump — trump ! ” he reiterated with a 
start, as if the word had stung him — “trump I he was a 
BRICK I ” 

Then fixing his eyes on me, dropping his arms, inter- 


58 


THE CAXTONS: 


lacing Ills fingers in the manner recorded of Talma in the 
celebrated “ Qu’en distu 1 ” he resumed in a hollow voice, 
slow and distinct 

“ When — saw — you — him, — young m — m — a — n 
— mm?” 

Finding the tables thus turned on myself, and not 
willing to give Mr. Peac — any clue to poor Yivian (who 
thus appeared, to my great satisfaction, to have finally 
dropped an acquaintance more versatile than reputable), 
I contrived, by a few evasive sentences, to keep Mr. 
Peac — ’s curiosity at a distance, till he was summoned in 
haste to change his attire for the domestic drama. And 
so we parted. 


CHAPTER Yl. 

I HATE law details as cordially as my readers can, and 
therefore I shall content myself with stating that Mr. 
Pike’s management, at the end, not of three days, but of 
two weeks, was so admirable, that Uncle Jack was drawm 
out of prison, and my father extracted from all his 
liabilities, by a sum two-thirds less than was first start- 
lingly submitted to our indignant horror — and that, too, 
in a manner that would have satisfied the conscience of 
the most punctilious formalist, whose contribution to the 
national fund, for an omitted payment to the Income Tax, 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer ever had the honor to 
acknowledge. Still, the sum was very large in proportion 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


59 


to my poor father’s income : and what with Jack’s debts, 
the claims of the Anti-Publisher Society’s printer — 
including the very expensive plates that had been so 
lavishly bespoken, and in great part completed, fo^ the 
History of Human Error — and, above all, the liabilities 
incurred on The Capitalist ; what with the plant, as Mr. 
Peck technically phrased a great upas-tree of a total, 
branching out into types, cases, printing-presses, engines, 
&c., all now to be resold at a third of their, value ; what 
with advertisements and bills, that had covered all the 
dead-walls by which rubbish might be shot, throughout 
the three kingdoms ; what with the dues of reporters, and 
salaries of writers, who had been engaged for a year at 
least to The Capitalist, and whose claims survived the 
wretch they had killed and buried ; what, in short, with 
all that the combined ingenuity of Uncle Jaek and Printer 
Peck could supply for the utter ruin of the Caxton family 
— even after all deductions, curtailments, and after all 
that one could extract in the way of just contribution 
from the least unsubstantial of those shadows called the 
shareholders — my father’s fortune was reduced to a sum 
of between seven and eight thousand pounds, which being 
placed at mortgage at four per cent,, yielded just £372 
1 Os. a-year — enough for my father to live upon, but not 
enough to afford also his son Pisistratus the adrantages 
of education at Trinity College, Cambridge. The blow 
fell rather upon me than ray father, and ray young shoul- 
ders bore it without much wincing. 

This settlea to our universal satisfaction, I went to pay 


60 


THE CAXTONS: 


niy farewell visit to Sir Sedley Beaudesert. He had made 
much of me, during my stay in London. I had break- 
fasted and dined with him pretty often ; I had presented 
Squills to him, who no sooner set eyes upon that splendid 
conformation, than he described his character with the 
nicest accuracy, as the necessary consequence of such a 
development for the rosy pleasures of life. We had never 
once retouched on the subject of Fanny’s marriage, and 
both of us tacitly avoided even mentioning the Treva- 
nions. But in this last visit, though he maintained the 
same reserve as to Fanny, he referred without scruple to 
her father. 

“Well, my young Athenian,” said he, after con- 
gratulating me on the result of the negotiations, and 
endeavoring again in vain to bear at least some share in 
my father’s losses — “well, I see I cannot press this 
farther ; but at least T can press on you any little interest 
I may have, in obtaining some appointment for yourself 
in one of the public offices. Trevanion could of course 
be more useful, but I can understand that he is not the 
kind of man you would like to apply to.” 

“ Shall I own to you, my dear Sir Sedley, that I have 
no taste for official employment ? I am too fond of my 
liberty. Since I have been at my uncle’s old Tower, 1 
account for half my character by the Borderer’s blood 
that is in me. I doubt if I am meant for the life of 
cities ; and I have old floating notions in my head, that 
will serve to amuse me when I get home, and may settle 
into schemes. And now to change the subject, may I 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


fil 

ask wliat kind of person has succeeded me as Mr 
Trevaiiion’s secretary ? ” 

“ Why, he has got a broad-shouldered, stooping 
fellow, in spectacles and cotton stockings, who has 
written upon ‘ Rent,’ I believe — an imaginative treatise 
in his case, I fear, for rent is a thing he could never have 
received, and not often been trusted to pay. However, 
he is one of your political economists, and wants 
Trevanion to sell his pictures, as ‘ unproductive capital. ’ 
Less mild than Pope’s Narcissa, ‘to make a wash,’ he 
would certainly ‘stew a child.’ Besides this official 
secretary, Trevanion trusts, however, a good deal to a 
clever, good-looking young gentleman, who is a great 
favorite with him.” 

“ What is his name ? ” 

“His name ? — oh, Gower ; a natural son, I believe, 
of one of the Gower family.” 

Here two of Sir Sedley’s fellow fine gentlemen lounged 
in, and my visit ended. 


CHAPTER yil. 

“I SWEAR,” cried my uncle, “that it shall be so.” 
And with a big frown, and a truculent air, he seized the 
fatal instrument. 

“ Indeed, brother, it must not,” said my father, laying 
one pale, scholar-like hand mildly on Captain Roland’s 
II. — 6 


62 


THE C AXTONS: 


brown, bellicose, and bony fist ; and with the other, out* 
stretched, protecting the menaced, palpitating victim. 

Not a word had my uncle heard of our losses, until 
they had been adjusted, and the sum paid ; for we all 
knew that the old Tower would have been gone — sold 
to some neighboring squire or jobbing attorney — at the 
first impetuous impulse of Uncle Roland’s affectionate 
generosity. Austin endangered I Austin ruined ! — he 
would never have rested till he came, cash in hand, to his 
deliverance Therefore, I say, not till all was settled did 
I write to the Captain, and tell him gaily what had 
chanced. And, however light I made of our misfortunes, 
the letter brought the Captain to the red brick house the 
same evening on which I myself reached it, and about an 
hour later. My uncle had not sold the Tower, but he 
came prepared to carry us off to it vi et We 

must live with him, and on him — let or sell the brick 
house, and put out the remnant of my father’s income to 
nurse and accumulate. And it was on finding my father’s 
resistance stubborn, and that hitherto he had made no 
way, that my uncle, stepping back into the hall, in which 
he had left his carpet-bag, &c., returned with an old oak 
case, and, touching a spring roller, out flew the Caxton 
pedigree. 

Out it flew — covering all the table, and undulating. 
Nile-like, till it had spread over books, papers, my mother’s 
work-box, and the tea-service (for the tal)le was large and 
compendious, emblematic of its owner’s mind)~and then, 
flowing on the carpet, dragged its slow length along, t 11 
it was stopi>ed by the fender 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


eB 

“Now,” said my uncle, solemnly, “there never have 
been but two causes of difference between you and me, 
Austin. One is over ; why should the other last ? Aha I 
I know why you hang back ; you think that we may 
quarrel about it I ” 

“About what, Roland?” 

“About it, I say — and I’ll be d — d if we do I ” cried 
my uncle, reddening. “And I have been thinking a great 
deal upon the matter, and I have no doubt you are right. 
S>o I brought the old parchment with me, and you shall 
see me fill up the blank, just as you would have it. Now, 
then, you will come and live with me, and we can never 
quarrel any more.” 

Thus saying. Uncle Roland looked round for pen and 
ink ; and having found them — not without difficulty, for 
they had been submerged under the overflow of the 
pedigree — he was about to fill up the lacuna, or hiatus, 
which had given rise to such memorable controversy, with 
the name of “William Caxton, printer in the Sanctuary,” 
when my father, slowly recovering his breath, and aware 
of his brother’s purpose, intervened. It would have done 
your heart good to hear them — so completely, in the 
inconsistency of human nature^ had they changed sides 
upon the question — my father now all for Sir William 
de Caxton, the hero of Bosworth ; my uncle all for the 
immortal printer. And in this discussion they grew 
animated : their eyes sparkled, their voices rose — Roland’s 
voice deep and thunderous, Austin’s sharp and piercing. 
Mr. Squills stopped his cars. Thus it arrived at that 


64 


THE OAXTONS: 


point, when my uncle doggedly came to the end of all 
argumentation — “I swear that it shall be so;” and my 
father, trying the last resource of pathos, looked plead- 
ingly into Roland’s eyes, and said, with a tone soft as 
mercy, “Indeed, brother, it must not.” Meanwhile, the 
dry parchment crisped, creaked, and trembled in every 
pore of its yellow skin. 

“ But,” said I, coming in, opportunely, like the Horatian 
deity, “ I don’t see that either of you gentlemen has a 
right so to dispose of my ancestry. It is quite clear tha^ 
a man has no possession in posterity. Posterity may 
possess him ; but deuce a bit will he ever be the better 
for his great-great-grandchildren ! ” 

Squills. — Hear, hear I 

PisiSTRATUS (warming). — But a man’s ancestry is a 
positive property to him. How much, not only of acres, 
but of his constitution, his temper, his conduct, character, 
and nature, he may inherit from some progenitor ten times 
removed I Nay, without that progenitor would he ever 
have been born — would a Squills ever have introduced 
him into the world, or a nurse ever have carried him wy>o 
i:olpo ? 

Squills. — Hear, hear 1 

PisiSTRATUS (with dignified emotion). — No man, there- 
fore, has a right to rob another of a forefather, with a 
stroke of his pen, from any motives, howsoever amiable. 
In the present instance, you will say, perhaps, that the 
ancestor in question is apocryphal — it may be the printer, 
it may be the knight. Granted ; but here, where hisiory 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


65 


is in fault, shall a mere sentiment decide ? While both 
are doubtful, my imagination appropriates both. At one 
time I can reverence industry and learning in the printer ; 
at another, valor and devotion in the knight. This kindly 
doubt gives me two great forefathers ; and, through them, 
two trains of idea that influence my conduct under different 
circumstances. I will not permit you. Captain Roland, 
to rob me of either forefather — either train of idea. 
Leave, then, this sacred void unfilled, unprofaned ; and 
accept this compromise of chivalrous courtesy — while my 
father lives with the Captain, we will believe in the 
printer ; when away from the Captain, we will stand firm 
to the knight. 

“ Good I” cried Uncle Roland, as I paused, a little out 
of breath. 

“And,’’ said my mother softly, “I do think, Austin, 
there is a way of settling the matter which will please all 
parties. It is quite sad to think that poor Roland, and 
dear little Blanche, should be all alone in the Tower; 
and I am sure that we should be much happier all 
together.” 

“ There,” cried Roland triumphantly. “ If you are not 
the most obstinate, hard-hearted, unfeeling brute in the 
world — which I don’t take you to be — brother Austin, 
after that really beautiful speech of your wife’s, there is 
not a word to be said further.” 

“ But we have not yet heard Kitty to the end, Roland.” 

“ I beg your pardon a thousand times, ma’am — sister,” 
said the Captain, bowing. 

6 * 


E 


66 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ Well, I was going to add,” said my mother, “ that we 
will go and live with you, Roland, and club our little 
fortunes together. Blanche and I will take care of the 
house, and we shall be just twice as rich together as we 
are separately.” 

“ Pretty sort of hospitality that I ” grunted the Captain. 

1 did not expect you to throw me over in that way. 
N 0 , no ; you must lay by for the boy there — what’s to 
become of him ? ” 

“But we shall all lay by for him,” said my mother, 
simply ; “ you as well as Austin. We shall have more 
to save, if we have more to spend.” 

“Ah, save I — that is easily said: there would be a 
pleasure in saving, then,” said the Captain, mournfully. 

“And what’s to become of me ? ” cried Squills, very 
petulantly. “Am I to be left here in my old age — not a 
rational soul to speak to, and no other place in the village 
where there’s a drop of decent punch to be had ! ‘ A 

plague on both your houses I’ as the chap said at the 
theatre the other night.” 

“ There’s room for a doctor in our neighborhood, Mr. 
Squills,” said the Captain. “ The gentleman in your 
profession who does for us, wants, I. know, to sell the 
business.” 

“ Humph,” said Squills — “a horribly healthy neighbor- 
hood, I suspect I ” 

“ Why, it has that misfortune, Mr. Squills ; but with 
your help,” said my uncle, slyly, “ a great alteration foi 
the better may be effected in that respect.” 


A FAMILY PICTURE 


67 


Mr. Squills was about to reply, when ring — a-ting — 
*mg — ting ! there came such a brisk, impatient, make- 
one’s-self-at-home kind of tintinnabular alarum at tiie 
great gate, that we all started up and looked ai each 
other in surprise. Who could it possibly be ? We were 
not kept long in suspense ; for in another moment. Uncle 
Jack’s voice, which was always very clear and distinct, 
pealed through the hall ; and we were still staring at each 
other when Mr. Tibbets, with a bran-new muffler round 
his neck, and a peculiarly comfortable great-coat — best 
double Saxony, equally new — dashed into the room, 
bringing with him a very considerable quantity of cold 
air, which he hastened to thaw, first in my father’s arms, 
next in my mother’s. He then made a rush at the 
Captain, who ensconced himself behind the dumb-waiter 
with a Hem I Mr. — sir — Jack — sir — hem, hem 1 ” 
Failing there, Mr. Tibbets rubbed off the remaining frost 
upon his double Saxony against your humble servant: 
patted Squills affectionately on the back, and then pro- 
ceeded to occupy his favorite position before the fire. 

“ Took you by surprise, eh ? ” said Uncle Jack, unpeel- 
ing himself by the hearth-rug. “But no — not by surprise ; 
you must have known Jack’s heart ; you at least, Austin 
Caxton, who know everything — you must have seen that 
it overflowed with the tenderest and most brotherly 
emotions ; that once delivered from that cursed Fleet 
(you have no idea what a place it is, sir), I could not rest, 
night or day, till I had flown here — here, to the dear 
‘’amily nest — poor wounded dove that I ami” added 


68 


THE CAXTONS: 


Uncle Jack, pathetically, and taking out his pocket-hand- 
kerchief from the double Saxony, which he had now flung 
over my father’s arm-chair. 

Not a word replied to this eloquent address, with its 
touching peroration. My mother hung down her pretty 
head, and looked ashamed. My uncle retreated quite 
into the corner, and drew the dumb-waiter after him, so 
as to establish a complete fortification. Mr. Squills seized 
the pen that Roland had thrown down, and began mend- 
ing it furiously — that is, cutting it into slivers — thereby 
denoting symbolically, how he would like to do with Uncle 
Jack, could he once get him safe and snug under his 
manipular operations. I bent over the pedigree, and my 
father rubbed his spectacles. 

The silence would have been appalling to another man : 
nothing appalled Uncle Jack. 

Uncle Jack turned to the fire, and warmed first one 
foot, then the other. This comfortable ceremony per- 
formed, he again faced the company — and resumed, 
musingly, and as if answering some imaginary observa- 
tions — 

Yes, yes— you are right there— and a deuced unlucky 
speculation it proved too.- But I was overruled by that 
fellow Peck Says I to him — says I — 'Capitalist! pshaw 
— no popular interest there — it don’t address the great 
public 1 Yery confined class the capitalists ; better throw 
ourselves boldly on the people. Yes,’ said I, ‘call it the 
Ju/i-Capitalist.’ By Jove ! sir, we should have carried all 
before us 1 but I was overruled. The Anti- Capitalist !-- 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


69 


what an idea I Address the whole reading world, there 
sir ; everybody hates the capitalist — everybody would 
have his neighbor’s money. Anti- Capitalist! — sir. 

¥e should have gone off in the manufacturing towns like 

vildfire. But what could I do ? ” 

“John Tibbets,” said my father, solemnly, “Capitalist 
or Anti- Capitalist, thou hadst a right to follow thine own 
bent in either — but always provided it had been witlr 
thine own money.- Thou seest not the thing, John Tibbets, 
in the right point of view ; and a little repentance in the 
face of those thou hast wronged, would not have misbe- 
come thy father’s son, and thy sister’s brother I ” 

Never had so severe a rebuke issued from the mild lips 
of Austin Caxton ; and I raised my ’eyes with a com- 
passionate thrill, expecting to see John Tibbets gradually 
sink and disappear through the carpet. 

“ Repentance I ” cried Uncle Jack, bounding up, as if 
he had been shot. “And do you think I have a heart of 
stone, of pummystone I — do you think I don’t repent ? 
I have done nothing but repent — I shall repent to my 
dying day.” 

“ Then there is no more to be said. Jack,” cried my 
father, softening, and holding out his hand. 

“Yes,” cried Mr. Tibbets, seizing the hand, and press 
ing it to the heart he had thus defended from the suspicion 
of being pummy — “yes — that I should have trusted that 
dunder-headed, rascally, curmudgeon Peck : that I should 
have let him call it The Capitalist, despite all my con- 
victions, when the Anti ” 


2d 


70 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ Pshaw I interrupted my father, drawing away his 
hand. 

“ Johi said my mother, gravely, and with tears in her 
voice, “you forget who delivered you from prison — you 
forget whom you have nearly consigned to prison your- 
self — you forg ” 

“ Hush, hush I ” said my father, “ this will never do ; 
and it is you who forget, my dear, the obligations I owe 
to Jack. He has reduced my fortune one-half, it is true ; 
but I verily think he has made the three hearts, in which 
lie my real treasures, twice as large as they were before. 
Pisistratus, my boy, ring the bell.” 

“ My dear Kitty,” cried Jack, whimperingly, and steal- 
ing up to my mother, “ don’t be so hard on me ; I thought 
to make all your fortunes — I did indeed.” 

Here the servant entered. 

“ See that Mr. Tibbets’ things are taken up to his room, 
and that there is a good fire,” said my father. 

“And,” continued Jack, loftily, “ I will make all your 
fortunes yet. I have it here ! ” and he struck his head. 

“ Stay a moment I ” said my father to the servant, who 
had got back to the door. “ Stay a moment,” said my 
father, looking extremely frightened ; “ perhaps Mr. 
Tibbets may prefer the inn 1 ” 

“Austin,” said Uncle Jack, with emotion, “if I were 
a dog, with no home but a dog-kennel, and you came to 
me for shelter, I would turn out — to give you the best 
of the straw 1 ” 

My father was thoroughly melted this time 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


n 


Primmilis will be sure to see everything is made com- 
fortable for Mr. Tibbets,” said he, waving his hand to the 
servant. “ Something nice for supper, Kitty, my dear — • 
and the largest punch-bowl. You like punch. Jack ? 

** Punch, Austin I ” said Uncle Jack, putting his hand- 
kerchief to his eyes. 

The Captain pushed aside the dumb-waiter, strode 
across the room, and shook hands with Uncle Jack ; my 
mother buried her face in her apron, and fairly ran off ; 
and Squills said in my ear, “ It all comes of the biliary 
secretions. Nobody could account for this, who did not 
know the peculiarly fine organisation of your father’s — 
liver 1 ” 


PART TWELFTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

The Hegira is completed — we have all taken roost in 
the old tower. My father’s books have arrived by the 
waggon, and have settled themselves quietly in their new 
abode — filling up the apartment dedicated to their owner, 
including the bed-chamber and two lobbies. Tlie duck 
also has arrived, under wing of Mrs. Primmins, and has 
reconciled herself to the old stewpond, by the side of 
which my father has found a walk that compensates for 
the peach- wall — especially as he has made acquaintance 
with sundry respectable carps, who permit him to feed 
them after he has fed the duck — a privilege of which 
(since, if any one else approaches, the carps are off in an 
instant) my father is naturally vain. All privileges are 
valuable in proportion to the exclusiveness of their 
enjoyment. 

Now, from the moment the first carp had eaten the 
bread my father threw to it, Mr. Caxton had mentally 
resolved that a race so confiding should never be sacri- 

( 72 ) 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


n 

need to Ceres and Primmins. But all the fishes on my 
uncle’s property were under the special care of that 
Proteus Bolt — and Bolt was not a man likely to suffer 
the carps to earn their bread without contributing their 
full share to the wants of the community. But, like 
master, like man I Bolt was an aristocrat fit to be hung 
d la lanterne. He out-Rolanded Roland in the respect 
he entertained for sounding names and old families ; and 
by that bait my father caught him with such skill, that 
you might see that, if Austin Caxton had been an angler 
of fishes, he could have filled his liasket full any day, 
shine or rain. 

“You observe. Bolt,” said my father, beginning art- 
fully, “ that those fishes, dull as you may think them, are 
creatures capable of a syllogism ; and if they saw that, 
in proportion to their civility to me, they were depopu- 
lated by you, they would put two and two together, and 
renounce my acquaintance.” 

“Is that what you call being silly Jems, sir?” said 
Bolt ; “faith, there is many a good Christian not half sc 
wise I ” 

0 

“ Man,” answered my father thoughtfully, “ is an animal 
less syllogistical, or more silly- Jemical, than many crea- 
tures popularly esteemed his inferiors. Yes, let but one 
of those CyprinidaB, with his fine sense of logic, see that, 
if his fellow-fishes eat bread, they are suddenly jerked out 
of their element, and vanish for ever; and though you 
broke a quartern loaf into crumbs, he would snap his tail 
at you with enlightened contempt. If,” said my father, 
II. — I 


74 


THE CAXTONS: 


soliloquising, “ I had been as syllogistic as those scaly 
logicians, I should never have swallowed that hook, which 
— hum I there — least said soonest mended. But, Mr. 
Bolt, to return to the Cyprinidae.” 

“ What’s the hard name you call them ’ere carp, your 
honor ? ” asked Bolt. 

“ Cyprinidae, a family of the section Malacoptergii 
Abdominales,” replied Mr. Caxton ; “their teeth are 
generally confined to the Pharyngeans, and their bran- 
chiostegous rays are but few — marks of distinction from 
fishes vulgar and voracious.” 

“Sir,” said Bolt, glancing to the stewpond, “if I had 
known they had been a family of such importance, I am 
sure I should have treated them with more respect.” 

“ They are a very old family. Bolt, and have been 
settled in England since the fourteenth century. A 
younger branch of the family has established itself m a 
pond in the gardens of Peterhofif (the celebrated palace 
of Peter the Great, Bolt — an emperor highly respected 
by my brother, for he killed a great many people very 
gloriously in battle, besides those whom he sabred for his 
own private amusement). And there is an officer or 
servant of the Imperial household, whose task it is to 
summon those Russian Cyprinidae to dinner, by ringing a 
bell, shortly after which, you may see the emperor and 
empress, with all their waiting-ladies and gentlemen, 
coming down in their carriages to see the Cyprinidae eat 
in state. So you perceive. Bolt, that it would be a 
republican, Jacobinical proceeding to stew members of a 
family so intimately associated with royalty.” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


75 


“ Dear me, sir,” said Bolt, “ I am very glad you told 
me. I ought to have known they were genteel fish, they 
are so mighty shy — as all your real quality are.” 

My father smiled, and rubbed his hands gently ; he had 
carried his point, and henceforth the Cyprinidse of the 
section Malacoptergii Abdominales were as sacred in 
Bolt’s eyes as cats and ichneumons were in those of a 
priest in Thebes. 

My poor father 1 with what true and unostentatious 
philosophy thou didst accommodate thyself to the greatest 
change thy quiet, harmless life had known, since it had 
passed out of the brief burning cycle of the passions. 
Lost was the home endeared to thee by so many noiseless 
victories of the mind — so many mute histories of the 
heart — for only the scholar knoweth how deep a charm 
lies in monotony, in the old associations, the old ways, 
and habitual clockwork of peaceful time. Yet the home 
may be replaced — thy heart built its home round itself 
everywhere — and the old Tower might supply the loss 
of the brick house, and the walk by the stewpond become 
as dear as the haunts by the sunny peach- wall. But what 
shall replace to thee the bright dream of thine innocent 
ambition — that angel- wing which had glittered across thy 
manhood, in the hour between its noon and its setting? 
What replace to thee the Magnum Opus — the Great 
Book I — fair and broad-spreading tree — lone amidst the 
sameness of the landscape — now plucked up by the roots ! 
The ox 3 ^gcn was subtracted from the air of thy life. For 
be it known to you, 0 my compassionate readers, that 


THE CAXTONS; 


with the death of the Anti-Publisher Society, the blood 
streams of the Great Book stood still— -its pulse was 
arrested — its full heart beat no more. Three thousand 
copies of the first seven sheets in quarto, with sundry 
unfinished plates, anatomical, architectural, and graphic, 
depicting various developments of the human skull (that 
temple of Human Error), from the Hottentot to the 
Greek ; sketches of ancient buildings, Cyclopean and 
Pelasgic ; Pyramids, and Pur-tors, all signs of races whose 
handwriting was on their walls ; landscapes to display 
the influence of Nature upon the customs, creeds, and 
philosophy of men — here showing how the broad Chaldean 
wastes led to the contemplation of the stars ; and illus- 
trations of the Zodiac, in elucidation of the mysteries of 
symbol-worship ; fantastic vagaries of earth fresh from 
the Deluge, tending to impress on early superstition the 
awful sense of the rude powers of Nature ; views of the 
rocky defiles of Laconia ; Sparta, neighbored by the 
“ silent Amyclm,” explaining, as it were geographically, 
the iron customs of the warrior colony (arch Tories, 
amidst the shift and roar of Hellenic democracies), con- 
trasted by the seas, and coasts, and creeks of Athens and 
Ionia, tempting to adventure, commerce, and change. 
Yea, my father, in his suggestions to the artist of those 
few imperfect plates, had thrown as much light on the 
infancy of earth and its tribes as by the “ shining words ” 
that flowed from his calm, starry knowledge I Plates and 
copies, all rested now in peace and dust — “housed with 
darkness and with death,” on the sepulchral shelves of 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


the lobby to which they were consigned — rays intercepted 
— worlds incompleted. The Prometheus was bonnd, and 
the fire he had stolen from heaven lay imbedded in the 
flints of his rock. For so costly was the mould in which 
Uncle Jack and the Anti-Publisher Society had contrived 
to cast this Exposition of Human Error, that every book- 
seller shyed at its very sight, as an owl blinks at daylight, 
or human error at truth. In vain Squills and I, before 
we left London, had carried a gigantic specimen of the 
Magnum Opus into the back-parlors of firms the most 
opulent and adventurous. Publisher after publisher 
started, as if we had held a blunderbuss to his ear. All 
Paternoster Row uttered a “ Lord deliver us ! ” Hum ^n 
Error found no man so egregiously its victim as to com- 
plete those two quartos, with the prospect of two others, 
at his own expense. Now I had earnestly hoped that my 
father, for the sake of mankind, would be persuaded to 
risk some portion — and that, I own, not a small one — 
of his ‘remaining capital on the conclusion of an under- 
taking so elaborately begun. But there my father was 
obdurate. No big words about mankind, and the advan- 
tage to unborn generations, could stir him an inch. 
“ Stuff I ” said Mr. Caxton, peevishly. “A man’s duties 
to mankind and posterity begin with his own son ; and 
naving wasted half your patrimony, I will not take another 
huge slice out of the poor remainder to gratify my vanity, 
for that is the plain truth of it. Man must atone for sin 
oy expiation. By the book I have sinned, and the book 
must expiate it. Pile the sheets up in the lobby, so that 
7 * 


at least one man may be wiser and humbler by the sight 
of Human Error, every time he walks by so stupendous a 
monument of it/’ 

Verily, I know not how my father could bear to look 
at those dumb fragments of himself — strata of the Cax- 
tonian conformation lying layer upon layer, as if packed 
up and disposed for the inquisitive genius of some moral 
Murchison or Mantell. But for my part, I never glanced 
at their repose in the dark lobby, without thinking, 
“ Courage, Pisistratus I courage I there’s something worth 
living for ; work hard, grow rich, and the Great Book 
shall come out at last.” 

Meanwhile, I wandered over the country, and made 
acquaintance with the farmers, and with Trevanion’s 
steward — an able man, and a great agriculturist — and I 
learned from them a better notion of the nature of my 
uncle’s domains. Those domains covered an immense 
acreage, which, save a small farm, was of no value at 
present. But land of the same sort had been lately 
redeemed by a simple kind of draining, now well known 
in Cumberland ; and, with capital, Boland’s barren moors 
might become a noble property. But capital, where was 
that to come from ? Nature gives us all except the means 
to turn her into marketable account. As old Plautus 
saith so wittily, “ Day, night, water, sun, and moon, are 
to be had gratis ; for everything else — down with your 
dust I ” 


A FAMILY PICTUEE. 


n 


CHAPTER IT. 

Nothing has been heard of Uncle Jack. Before we 
left the brick house, the captain gave him an invitation 
to the Tower — more, I suspect, out of compliment to my 
mother than from the unbidden impulse of his own inclina- 
tions. But Mr. Tibbets politely declined it. During his 
stay at the brick house, he had received and written a vast 
number of letters — some of these he received, indeed, 
were left at the village post-office, under the alphabetical 
addresses of A B or X Y ; for no misfortune ever paralyzed 
the energies of Uncle Jack. In the winter of adversity 
he vanished, it is true ; but even in vanishing, he vegetated 
still. He resembled those algce, termed the Protococcus 
nivale&j which give a rose-color to the Polar snows that 
conceal them, and flourish unsuspected amidst the general 
dissolullon of Nature. Uncle Jack, then, was as lively 
and sanguine as ever — though he began to let fall vague 
hints of intentions to abandon the general cause of his 
fellow-creatures, and tc set up business henceforth purely 
on his own account ; wherewith my father — to the great 
shock of my belief in his philanthropy — expressed him- 
self much pleased. And I strongly suspect that, when 
Uncle Jack wrapped himself up in his new double Saxony, 
and went off at last, he carried with him something more 


80 


THE CAXrONS: 


than my father s good wishes in aid of his conversion tc 
egotistical philosophy. 

“ That man will do yet,” said my father, as the last 
glimpse was caught of Uncle Jack standing up on the 
stage-coach box, beside the driver, partly to wave his 
hand to us as we stood at the gate, and partly to array 
himself more commodiously in a box-coat with six capes, 
which the coachman had lent him. 

“ Do you think so, sir ? ” said I, doubtfuUy. “ May I 
ask why ? ” 

Mr. Caxton. — On the cat principle — that he tumbles 
so lightly. You may throw him down from St. Paul’s, 
and the next time you see him he will be scrambling a-top 
of the Monument. 

PisiSTRATUs. — But a cat the most viparious is limited 
to nine lives ; and Uncle Jack must be now far gone in 
his eighth. 

Mr. Caxton (not heeding that answer, for he has got 
his hand in his waistcoat). — The earth, according to 
Apuleius, in his Treatise on the Philosophy of Plato, was 
produced from right-angled triangles ; hot fire and air 
from the scalene triangle — the angles of which, I need 
not say, are very different from those of a right-angled 
triangle. Now I think there are people in the world of 
whom one can only judge rightly according to those 
mathematical principles applied to their original con- 
struction : for, if air or fire predominates in our natures, 
we are scalene triangles ; — if earth, riglit-angled. Now, 
as air is so notably manifested in Jack’s conformation, he 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


81 


ia, nolens volens, produced in conformity with his pre- 
ponderating element. He is a scalene triangle, and must 
bo judged, accordingly, upon irregular, lop-sided princi 
pies ; whereas you and I, common-place mortals, art 
produced, like the earth, which is our preponderating 
element, with our triangles all right-angled, comfortable 
and complete ; for which blessing let us thank Providence, 
and be charitable to those who are necessarily windy and 
gaseous, from that unlucky scalene triangle upon which 
they have had the misfortune to be constructed, and which, 
you perceive, is quite at variance with the mathematical 
constitution of the earth I 

PisiSTRATUS. — Sir, I am very happy to hear so simple, 
easy, and intelligible an explanation of Uncle Jack’s 
peculiarities ; and I only hope that, for the future, the 
sides of his scalene triangle may never be produced to 
our rectangular conformations. 

Mr. Caxton (descending from his stilts, with an air as 
mildly reproachful as if I had been cavilling at the virtues 
of Socrates). — You don’t do your uncle justice, Pisis- 
tratus ; he is a very clever man ; and I am sure that, in 
spite of his scalene misfortune, he would be an honest 
one — that is (added Mr. Caxton, correcting himseY ), not 
romantically or heroically honest — but honest as men go 
— if he could but keep his head long enough above water ; 
but, you see, when the best man in the world is engaged 
in the process of sinking, he catches hold of whatever 
comes in his way, and drowns the very friend who is 
swimming to save him. 

F 


THE CAXTONS: 


PisiSTRAr7js. . — Perfectly true, sir; but Uncle Jack 
makes it his business to be always sinking I 

Mr. Caxton ndiveti ). — And how could it bo 

other^^■ise, when he has been carrying all his fellow- 
creatures in his breeches-pockets I Now he has got rid 
of that dead weight, I should not be surprised if he swam 
like a cork. 

PisiSTRATUs (who, sincc the Capitalist, has become a 
strong Anti-Jackian). — But if, sir, you really think Uncle 
Jack’s love for his fellow-creatures is genuine, that is 
surely not the worst part of him. 

Mr. Caxton. — 0 literal ratiocinator, and dull to the 
true logic of Attic irony ! can’t you comprehend that an 
affection may be genuine as felt by the man, yet its nature 
be spurious in relation to others ? A man may genuinely 
believe he loves his fellow-creatures, when he roasts them 
like Torquemada, or guillotines them like St. Just ! 
Happily Jack’s scalene triangle, being more produced 
from air than from fire, does not give to his philanthropy 
the inflammatory character which distinguishes the benevo- 
lence of inquisitors and revolutionists. The philanthropy, 
therefore, takes a more flatulent and innocent form, and 
expends its strength in mounting paper balloons, out of 
which Jack pitches himself, with all the fellow-creatures 
he can coax into sailing with him. No doubt Uncle Jack’s 
philanthropy is sincere, when he cuts the string and soars 
up out of sight ; but the sincerity will not much mend 
tiieir bruises when himself and fellow-creatures come 
tumbling down neck and heels. It must be a very wide 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


83 


heart that can take in all mankind — and .of a very strong 
fibre to bear so much stretching. Such hearts there are 
heaven be thanked I — and all praise to them ! Jack’s is 
not of that quality. He is a scalene triangle. He is not 
a circle 1 And yet, if he would but let it rest, it is a good 
heart — a very good heart (continued my father, warming 
into a tenderness quite infantine, all things considered). 
Poor Jack I that was prettily said of him — “ That if lie 
were a dog, and he had no home but a dog-kennel, he 
would turn out to give me the best of the straw ! ” Poor 
brother Jack 1 

So the discussion was dropped ; and, in the meanwhile, 
Uncle Jack, like the short-faced gentleman in the Spec- 
tator, “distinguished himself by a profound silence.” 


CHAPTER III. 

Blanche has contrived to associate herself, if not with 
my more active diversions — in running over the country, 
and making friends with the farmers — still in all my more 
leisurely and domestic pursuits. There is about her a 
silent charm that it is very hard to define, but it seems to 
irise from a kind of innate sympathy with the moods and 
humors of those she loves. If one is gay, there is a 
cheerful ring in her silver laugh that seems gladness itself; 
if one is sad, and creeps away into a corner to bury one’s 
head in one’s hand, and muse — by-and-by, and just at 


81 


THE CAXTONS: 


the right moment, when one has mused one’s fill, and the 
lieart wants something to refresh and restore it, one feels 
two innocent arms round one’s neck — looks up — and 
lo ! Blanche’s soft eyes, full of wistful compassionate kind- 
ness ; though she has the tact not to question — it is 
enough for her to sorrow with your sorrow — she cares 
not to know more. A strange child ! — fearless, and yet 
seemingly fond of things that inspire children with fear ; 
fond of tales of fay, sprite, and ghost, which Mrs. Prim- 
mins draws fresh and new from her memory, as a conjuror 
draws pancakes hot and hot from a hat. And yet so sure 
is Blanche of her own innocence, that they never trouble 
her dreams in her lone little room, full of caiiginous 
corners and nooks, with the winds moaning round the 
desolate ruins, and the casements rattling hoarse in the 
dungeon-like wall. She would have no dread to walk 
through the ghostly keep in the dark, or cross the church- 
yard, what time, 

“ By the moon’s doubtful and malignant light,” 

the grave-stones look so spectral, and the shade from the 
yew-trees lies so still on the sward. When the brows of 
Roland are gloomiest, and the compression of his lips 
makes sorrow look sternest, be sure that Blanche is 
couched at his feet, waiting the moment when, with some 
lieavy sigh, the muscles relax, and she is sure of the smile 
if she climbs to his knee. It is pretty to chance on her 
gliding up broken turret-stairs, or standing hushed in the 
recess of shattered casements, and you wonder what 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


85 


thoughts of vague awe and solemn pleasure cai. be at 
work under that still little brow. 

She has a quick comprehension of all that is taught to 
her ; she already tasks to the full my mother’s educational 
arts. My father has had to rummage his library for books, " 
• r feed (or extinguish) her desire for “ farther informa- 
tijn ; ” and has promised lessons in French and Italian — 
at some golden time in the shadowy “By-and-by” — which 
are received so gratefully, that one might think Blanche 
mistook TU6maque and Novelle Morali for baby-houses 
and dolls. Heaven send her through French and Italian 
with better success than attended Mr. Caxton’s lessons in 
Greek to Pisistratus ! She has an ear for music, which 
my mother, who is no bad judge, declares to be exquisite. 
Luckily there is an old Italian settled in a town ten miles 
off, who is said to be an excellent music-master, and who 
comes the round of the neighboring squirearchy twice a- 
week. I have taught her to draw — an accomplishment 
in which I am not without skill — and she has already 
taken a sketch from nature, which, barring the perspective, 
is not so amiss ; indeed, she has caught the notion of 
“ idealising ” (which promises future originality) from her 
own natural instincts, and given to the old witch-elm, that 
liangs over the stream, just the bow that it wanted to dip 
into the water, and soften off the hard lines. My only 
fear is, that Blanche should become too dreamy and 
thoughtful. Poor child, she has no one to play with ! So 
I look out, and get her a dog — frisky and young, who 
abhors sedentary occupations — a si^aniel, small and coal- 
II. — 8 


86 


THE CAXTONS: 


black, with ears sweeping the ground. I baptise him 
“ Juba,” in honor of Addison’s Cato, and in consideration 
of his sable curls and Mauritanian complexion. Blanche 
dees not seem so eerie and elf-like while gliding through 
the ruins, when Juba barks by her side, and scares the 
birds from the ivy. 

One day I had been pacing to and fro the hall, which 
was deserted ; and the sight of the armor and portraits — 
dumb evidences of the active and adventurous lives of 
the old inhabitants, which seemed to reprove my own 
inactive obscurity — had set me off on one of those 
Pegasean hobbies on which youth mounts to the skies — 
delivering maidens on rocks, and killing Gorgons and 
monsters — when Juba bounded in, and Blanche came 
after him, her straw hat in her hand. 

Blanche. — I thought you were here, Sisty ; may I stay ? 

PisiSTiiATUS. — Why, my dear child, the day is so fine, 
that instead of losing it in-doors, you ought to be running 
in the fields with Juba. 

J UBA. — Bow-wow. 

Blanche. — Will you come too? If Sisty stays in 
Blanche does not care for the butterflies ! 

Pisistratus, seeing that the thread of his day-dreams is 
broken, consents with an air of resignation. Just as they 
gain the door, Blanche pauses, and looks as if there were 
something on her mind. 

Pisistratus. — What now, Blanche? Why are you 
making knots in that ribbon, and writing invisible charac- 
ters on the floor with the point of that busy little foot ? 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 8? 

Blanche (mysteriously). — I have found a new room^ 
Sisty. Do you think we may look into it ? 

PisiSTRATUs. — Certainly ; unless any Bluebeard of 
your acquaintance told you not. Where is it ? 

Blanche. — Up stairs — to the left. 

PisiSTRATUS. — That little old door, going down two 
stone steps, which is always kept locked ? 

Blanche. — Yes 1 it is not locked to-day. The door 
was ajar, and I peeped in ; but I would not do more till 1 
came and asked you if you thought it would not be wrong. 

PISISTRATUS.— Yery good in you, my discreet little 
cousin. I have no doubt it is a ghost-trap ; however, with 
Juba’s protection, I think we might venture together; 

Pisistratus, Blanche, and Juba, ascend the stairs, and 
turn off down a dark passage to the left, away from the 
rooms in use. We reach the arch-pointed door of oak 
planks nailed roughly together — we push it open, and 
perceive that a small stair winds down from the room : it 
is just over Roland’s chamber. 

The room has a damp smell, and has probably been left 
open to be aired, for the wind comes through the unbarred 
casement, and a billet burns on the hearth. The place 
has that attractive, fascinating air which belongs to a 
lumber-room, than which I know nothing that so capti- 
vates the interest and fancy of young people. Whai 
treasures, to them, often lie hid in those quaint odds and 
ends which the elder generations have discarded as 
rubbish! All children are by nature antiquarians and 
relic-hunters Still there is an order and precision with 


8S 


THE CAXTONS: 


which the articles in that room are stowed away that 
belies the true notion of lumber — none of the mildew 
and dust which give such mournful interest to things 
abandoned to decay. 

In one corner are piled up cases, and military-looking 
trunks of outlandish aspect, with R. D. C. in brass na Is 
on their sides. From these we turn with involuntary 
respect, and call olf Juba, who has wedged himself behind 
in pursuit of some imaginary mouse. But in the other 
corner is what seems to me a child’s cradle — not an 
English one evidently : it is of wood, seemingly Spanish 
rosewood, with a railwork at the back, of twisted columns; 
and' I should scarcely have known it to be a cradle but 
for the fairy-like quilt aud the tiny pillows, which pro- 
claimed its uses. 

On the wall above the cradle were arranged sundry 
little articles, that had, perhaps, once made the joy of a 
child’s heart — broken toys with the paint rubbed off, a 
tin sword and trumpet, and a few tattered books, mostly 
in Spanish — by their shape and look, doubtless children’s 
books. Near these stood, on the floor, a picture with its 
face to the wall. Juba had chased the mouse that his 
fancy still insisted on creating, behind this picture, and, 
as he abruptly drew back, the picture fell into the hands 
I stretched forth to receive it. I turned the face to the 
light, and was surprised to see merely an old family 
portrait ; it was that of a gentleman in the flowered vest 
and stiff ruff which referred the date of his existence to 
the reign of Elizabeth — a man with a bold and noble 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


89 


countenance. On the corner was placed a faded coat of 
arms, beneath which was inscribed : “ Herbert de C ax- 
ton, Eq: Aur: JEtat : 35.” 

On the back of the canvas I observed, as I now replaced 
the picture against the wall, a label in Roland’s hand- 
writing, though in a younger and more running hand than 
he now wrote. The words were these : — “ The best and 
bravest of our line. He charged by Sydney’s side on the 
field of Zutphen ; he fought in Drake’s ship against the 

armament of Spain. If ever I have a ” The rest of 

the label seemed to have been torn off. 

I turned away, and felt a remorseful shame that I had 
so far gratified my curiosity — if by so harsh a name the 
powerful interest that had absorbed me must be called. 
I looked round for Blanche ; she had retreated from my 
side to the door, and, with her hands before her eyes, was 
weeping. As I stole towards her, my glance fell on a 
book that lay on a chair near the casement, and beside 
those relics of an infancy once pure and serene. By the 
old-fashioned silver clasps, I recognised Roland’s Bible. 
I felt as if I had been almost guilty of profanation in my 
thoughtless intrusion. I drew away Blanche, and v/e 
descended the stairs noiselessly ; and not till we were on 
our favorite spot, amidst a heap of ruins on the feudal 
justice-hill, did I seek to kiss away her tears and ask the 
cause. 

“ My poor brother ! ” sobbed Blanche, “ they must have 
been his — and we. shall never, never see him again I — 
and poor papa’s Bible, which he reads when he is very, 
8 * 


90 


THE CAXTONb: 


very sad ! 1 did uot weep enough when my brother died. 
I know better what death is now I Poor papa I poor 
papa ! Don’t die, too, Sisty ! ” 

There was no running after butterflies that morning ; 
and it was long before I could soothe Blanche. Indeed, 
she bore the traces of dejection in her soft looks for many, 
many days ; and she often asked me, sighingly, “ Don’t 
you think it was very wrong in me to take you there ? 
Poor little Blanche, true daughter of Eve, she would not 
let me bear my due share of the blame ; she would have 
it all in Adam’s primitive way of justice — “ The woman 
tempted me, and I did eat.” And since then, Blanche 
has seemed more fond than ever of Roland, and compara- 
tively deserts me to nestle close to him, and closer, till he 
looks up and says : “ My child, you are pale ; go and run 
after the butterflies ; ” and she says now to him, not to me, 
“ Come too 1 ” drawing him out into the sunshine with a 
hand that will not lose its hold. 

Of all Roland’s line, this Herbert de Caxton was “ the 
best and bravest ! ” yet he had never named that ancestor 
to me — never put any forefather in comparison with the 
dubious and mythical Sir William. I now remembered 
once, that, in going over the pedigree, I had been struck 
by the name of Herbert — the only Herbert in the scroll 
— and had asked, “ What of him, uncle ? ” and Roland 
had muttered something inaudible, and turned away. 
And I remembered, also, that in Roland’s room there 
was the mark on the wall where a picture of that size had 
once hung. The picture had been removed thence before 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


91 


we first came, but must have hung there for years to have 
left that mark on the wall ; — perhaps suspended by Bolt, 
during Roland’s long continental absence. '‘If ever 1 

have a ” What were the missing words ? Alas I did 

they not relate to the son — missed for ever, evidently not 
forgotten still ? 


CHAPTER lY. 

My uncle sat on one side the fireplace, my mother on 
the other ; and I, at a small table between them, prepared 
to note down the results of their conference ; for they had 
met in high council, to assess their joint fortunes — 
determine what should be brought into the common stock, 
and set apart for the Civil List, and what should be laid 
aside as a Sinking Fund. Now my mother, true woman 
as she was, had a womanly love of show in her own quiet 
way — of making “ a genteel figure ” in the eyes of the 
neighborhood — of seeing that sixpence not only went as 
far as sixpence ought to go, but that, in the going, it 
should emit a mild but imposing splendor — not, indeed, 
a gaudy flash — a startling Borealian coruscation, which 
is scarcely within the modest and placid idiosyncrasies of 
sixpence — but a gleam of gentle and benign light, just 
to show where a sixpence had been, and allow you time 
to say, “ Behold I ” before 

The jaws of darkness did devour it up.” 


92 


THE CAXTONS: 


Thus, as I once before took occasion to apprise the 
reader, we had always held a very respectable position in 
the neighborhood round our square brick house ; been as 
sociable as my father’s habits would permit ; given our 
little tea-parties, and our occasional dinners, and, without 
attempting to vie with our richer associates, there had 
always been so exquisite a neatness, so notable a house- 
keeping, so thoughtful a disposition, in short, of all the 
properties indigenous to a well-spent sixpence, in my 
mother’s management, that there was not an old maid 
within seven miles of us who did not pronounce our tea- 
parties to be perfect ; and the great Mrs. Rollick, who 
gave forty guineas a-year to a professed cook and house- 
keeper, used regularly, whenever we dined at Rollick 
Hall, to call across the table to my mother (who there- 
with blushed up to her ears), to apologise for the straw- 
berry jelly. It is true, that when, on returning home, my 
mother adverted to that flattering and delicate compliment, 
in a tone that revealed the self-conceit of the human heart, 
my father — whether to sober his Kitty’s vanity into a 
proper and Christian mortification of spirit, or from that 
strange shrewdness which belonged to him — would remark 
that Mrs. Rollick was of a querulous nature ; that the 
compliment was meant not to please my mother, but to 
spite the professed cook and housekeeper, to whom the 
butler would be sure to repeat the invidious apology. 

In settling at the Tower, and assuming the head of its 
establishment, my mother was naturally anxious that, poor 
battered invalid though the Tower was, it should still put 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


98 


its best leg foremost. Sundry cards, despite the thinness 
of the neighborhood, had been left at the door ; various 
invitations, which my uncle had hitherto declined, had 
greeted his occupation of the ancestral ruin, and had 
become more numerous since the news of our arrival had 
gone abroad ; so that my mother saw before her a very 
suitable field for her hospitable accomplishments — a 
reasonable ground for her ambition that the Tower should 
hold up its head, as became a Tower that held the head 
of the family. 

But not to wrong thee, 0 dear mother I as thou sittest 
there, opposite the grim Captain, so fair and so neat — 
with thine apron as white, and thy hair as trim and as 
sheen, and thy morning cap, with its ribbons of blue, as 
coquettishly arranged as if thou hadst a fear that the 
least negligence on thy part might lose thee the heart 
of thine Austin — not to wrong thee by setting down to 
frivolous motives alone thy feminine visions of the social 
amenities of life, I know that thine heart, in its provident 
tenderness, was quite as much interested as ever thy 
vanities could be, in the hospitable thoughts on which 
thou wert intent. For, first and foremost, it was the wish 
of thy soul that thine Austin might, as little as possible, 
be reminded of the change in his fortunes — might miss 
as little as possible those interruptions to his abstracted 
scholarly moods, at which, it is true, he used to fret and 
to pshaw, and to cry Papae I but which, nevertheless^ 
always did him good, and freshened up the stream of his 
thoughts. And next, it was the conviction of thine 


94 


THE CAXTONS: 


understanding that a little society, and boon companion- 
ship, and the proud pleasure of showing his ruins, and 
presiding at the hall of his forefathers, would take Roland 
out of those gloomy reveries into which he still fell at 
times. And, thirdly, for us young people, ought not 
Blanche to find companions in children of her own sex 
and age ? Already in thosg large black eyes there was 
something melancholy and brooding, as there is in the 
eyes of all children who live only with their elders ; and 
for Pisistratus, with his altered prospects, and the one 
great gnawing memory at his heart — which he tried to 
conceal from himself, but which a mother (and a mother 
who had loved) saw at a glance — what could be better 
than such union and interchange with the world around 
us, small though that world might be, as woman, sweet 
binder and blender of all social links, might artfully effect ? 
So that thou didst not go, like the awful Florentine, 

“Sopra lor vanita che par persona,” 

“over thin shadows that mocked the substance of real 
forms,” but rather it was the real forms that appeared as 
shadows or vanitd. 

What a digression ! — can I never tell my story in a 
plain straightforward way ? Certainly I was born under 
Cancer, and all my movements are circumlocutory, i tide- 
ways, and crab-like. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


ss 


CHAPTER V. 

* I TH'i'NK, Roland,” said my mother, “ that the esta- 
blishment is settled. Bolt, who is equal to three men at 
least ; Primmins, cook and housekeeper ; Molly, a good 
stirring girl — and willing (though I’ve had some difficulty 
in persuading her to submit not to be called Anna Maria). 
Their wages are but a small item, my dear Roland.” 

“ Hem 1 ”' said Roland, “ since we can’t do with fewer 
servants at less wages, I suppose we must call it small. ” 

‘‘It is so,” said my mother, with mild positiveness. 
“And, indeed, what with the game and fish, and the 
garden and poultry-yard, and your own mutton, our 
housekeeping will be next to nothing.” 

“ Hem 1 ” again said the thrifty Roland, with a slight 
inflection of the beetle brows. “ It may be next to 
nothing, ma’am — sister — just as a butcher’s shop may 
be next to N'orthumberland House ; but there is a vast 
deal between nothing and that next neighbor you have 
given it.” 

This speech was so like one of my father’s — so naive 
an imitation of that subtle reasoner’s use of the rhetorical 
figure called antanaclasis (or repetition of the same 
words in a different sense), that I laughed, and my mother 
smiled But she smiled reverently, not thinking of the 


96 


THE CAXTONS; 


antanaclasis, as, laying her hand on Roland « arm, she 
replied in the yet more formidable figure of speech called 
EPipnoNEMA (or exclamation), “Yet, with all your 
economy, you would have had us ” 

“ Tut 1 ” cried my uncle, parrying the epiphonema with 
a masterly APOSioPESis (or breaking off); “tut! if you 
had done what I wished, I should have had more pleasure 
for my money I ” 

My poor mother’s rhetorical armory supplied no 
weapons to meet that artful aposiopesis ; so she dropped 
the rhetoric altogether, and went on with that “unadorned 
eloquen'ce” natural to her, as to other great financial 
reformers : — “ WeU, Roland, but I am a good housewife, 
I assure you, and — don’t scold ; but that you never do — 
I mean, don’t look as if you would like to scold ; the fact 
is, that, even after setting aside lOOZ. a-year for our little 
parties — ” 

“ Little parties ! — a hundred a-year ! ” cried the Cap- 
tain, aghast. 

My mother pursued her way remorselessly — “Which 
we can well afford ; and without counting your half-pay, 
which you must keep for pocket-money and your wardrobe 
and Blanche’s, I calculate that we can allow Pisistratus 
150Z. a-year, which, with the scholarship he is to get, will 
keep him at Cambridge” (at that, seeing the scholarship 
was as yet amidst the Pleasures of Hope, I shook my 
head doubtfully), “and,” continued my mother, not heed- 
ing that sign of dissent, “ we shall still have something to 
lay by. ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


97 


The Captain’s face assumed a ludicrous expression of 
compassion and horror ; he evidently thought my mother’s 
misfortunes had turned her head. 

His tormentor continued. 

“ For,” said my mother, with a pretty calculating 
shake of her head, and a movement of the right forefinger 
towards the five fingers of the left hand, “370Z. — the 
interest of Austin’s fortune — and 50Z. that we may reckon 
for the rent of our house, make 420Z. a-year. Add your 
330Z. a-year from the farm, sheep-walk, and cottages that 
you let, and the total is 750Z. Now, with all we get for 
nothing for our housekeeping, as I said before, we can 
do very well with 500Z. a-year, and indeed make a hand- 
some figure. So, after allowing Sisty 150Z., we still have 
lOOZ. to lay by for Blanche.” 

“ Stop, stop, stop I ” cried the Captain, in great agita- 
tion ; “ who told you that I had 330Z. a-year ? ” 

“Why, Bolt — don’t be angry with him.” 

“Bolt is a blockhead. From 330Z. a-year take 200Z., 
and the remainder is all my income, besides my half-pay.” 

My mother opened her eyes, and so did I. 

“ To that 130Z. add, if you please, 130Z. of your own. 
All that you have over, my dear sister, is yours or 
Austin’s, or your boy’s ; but not a shilling can go to 
give luxuries to a miserly, battered old soldier. Do you 
understand me ? ” 

“ No, Roland,” said my mother, “ I don’t understand 
you at all. Dres not your property bring in 330Z 
a-year ? ” 

II. — 9 


a 


98 


THE C AXTONS : 


“ Yes, but it has a debt of 200Z. a-year on it,” said the 
Captain, gloomily and reluctantly. 

“ Oh, Roland I ” cried my mother, tenderly, and 
approaching so near that, had my father been in the 
room, I am sure she would have been bold enough to kiss 
the stern Captain, though I never saw him look sterner, 
and less kissable. “ Oh, Roland I ” cried my mother, 
concluding that famous epiphonema which my uncle’s 
APOSioPEsis had before nipped in the bud, “ and yet you 
would have made us, who are twice as rich, rob you of 
this little all I ” 

“Ah I’” said Roland, trying to smile, “ but I should 
have had my own way then, and starved you shockingly. 
No talk then of ‘little parties,’ and such like. But you 
must not now turn the tables against me, nor bring your 
420Z. a-year as a set-off to my 130Z.” 

“ Why,” said my mother, generously, “ you forget the 
money’s worth that you contribute — all that your grounds 
supply, and all that we save by it. I am sure that that’s 
worth a yearly 300Z. at the least.” 

“Madam — sister,” said the Captain, “I’m sure you 
don’t want to hurt my feelings. All I have to say is, 
that, if you add to what I bring an equal sum — to keep 
up the poor old ruin — it is the utmost that I can allow, 
and the rest is not more than Pisistratus can spend.” 

So saying, the Captain rose, bowed, and, before either 
of us could stop him, hobbled out of the room. 

“Dear me, Sisty 1 ” said my mother, wringing her 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


99 


hands, “I have certainly displeased him. How could 1 
guess he had so large a debt on the property ? 

“ Did not he pay his son’s debts ? Is not that the 
reason that ” 

‘‘Ah I ” interrupted my mother, almost crying, “ and it 
was that which ruffled him ; and I not to guess it ? What 
shall I do ? ” 

Set to work at a new calculation, dear mother, and 
let him have his own way.” 

“But then,” said my mother, “your uncle will mope 
himself to death, and your father will have no relaxation, 
while you see that he has lost his former object in his 
books. And Blanche — and you too. If we were only 
to contribute what dear Roland does, I do not see how, 
with 260Z. a-year, we could ever bring our neighbors 
round us ! I wonder what Austin would say 1 I have 
half a mind — no. I’ll go and look over the week-books 
with Primmins.” 

My mother went her way sorrowfully, and I was left 
alone. 

Then I looked on the stately old hall, grand in its 
forlorn decay. And the dreams I had begun to cherish 
at my heart swept over me, and hurried me along, far, 
far away into the golden land, whither Hope beckons 
youth. To restore my father’s fortunes — re-weave the 
links of that broken ambition which had knit his genius 
with the world — rebuild those fallen walls — cultivate 
those barren moors — revive the ancient name — glad the 
old soldier’s age — and be to both the brothers what 


100 


THE CAXTONS; 


Roland had lost — a son I These were my dreams ; and 
when I woke from them, lo 1 they had left behind an 
intense purpose, a resolute object. Dream, 0 youth I — 
dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be 
prophets I 


CHAPTER YI. 

LETTEB FROM PISISTRATUS CAXTON TO ALBERT TREVA- 
NION, ESQ., M. P. 

{The confession of a youth who in the Old Wwld finds himsdf one too many.) 

“ My dear Mr. Trevanion, — I thank you cordially, 
and so we do all, for your reply to my letter, informing 
you of the villanous traps through which we have passed 
i — not indeed with whole skins, but still whole in life and 
limb — which, considering that the traps w^ere three, and 
the teeth sharp, was more than we could reasonably 
expect. We have taken to the wastes, like wise foxes as 
we are, and I do not think a bait can be found that will 
again snare the fox paternal. As for the fox filial, it is 
different, and I am about to prove to you that he is burn- 
ing to redeem the family disgrace. Ah ! my dear Mr. 
Trevanion, if you are busy with ‘ blue-books ’ w^hen this 
letter reaches you, stop here, and put it aside for some 
rare moment of leisure. I am about to open my heart 
to you, and ask you, who know the world so well, to aid 
me in an escape from those Jiammantia mcenia, where- 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


101 


with 1 find that world begirt and enclosed. For look 
you, sir, you and my father were right when you both 
agreed that the mere book-life was not meant for me. 
And yet what is not book-life, to a young man who would 
make his way through the ordinary and conventional 
paths to fortune ? All the professions are so book-lined, 
book-hemmed, book-choked, that wherever these strong 
hands of mine stretch towards action, they find themselves 
met by octavo ramparts, flanked with quarto crenellations. 
For first, this college life, opening to scholarships, and 
ending, perchance, as you political economists would 
desire, in Malthusian fellowships — premiums for celibacy 
— consider what manner of thing it is! 

“ Three years, book upon book — a great Dead Sea 
before one, three years long, and all the apples that grow 
on the shore full of the ashes of pica and primer 1 Those 
three years ended, the fellowship, it may be, won — still 
books — books — if the whole world does not close at 
the college gates. Do I, from scholar, effloresce into 
literary man, author by profession ? — books — books 1 
Do I go into the law ? — books — books. Ars longa, 
vita brevis, which, paraphrased, means that it is slow 
work before one fags one’s way to a brief I Do 1 turn 
doctor ? Why, what but books can kill time, until, at 
the age of forty, a lucky chance may permit me to kill 
something else ? The church (for which, indeed, I don’t 
profess to be good enough) — that is book-life par excel- 
lence, whether, inglorious and poor, I wander through 
’ong lines of divines and fathers ; or, ambitious of bishop- 
9* 2f 


102 


THE CAXTONS: 


rics. I amend the corruptions, not of the human heart, 
but of a Greek text, and through defiles of scholiasts and 
commentators win my way to the See. In short, barring 
the noble profession of arms — which you know, after all, 
is not precisely the road to fortune — can you tell me any 
means by which one may escape these eternal books, this 
mental clockwork, and corporeal lethargy ? Where can 
this passion for life that runs riot through my veins find 
.ts vent ? Where can these stalwart limbs and this broad 
chest grow of value and worth, in this hot-bed of cerebral 
inflammation and dyspeptic intellect? I know what is 
in me ; I know I have the qualities that should go with 
stalwart limbs and broad chest. I have some plain com- 
mon sense, some promptitude and keenness, some pleasure 
in hardy danger, some fortitude in bearing pain— qualities 
for which I bless Heaven, for they are qualities good and 
useful in private life. But in the forum of men, in the 
market of fortune, are they not Jlocciy nauci, nihili? 

“ In a word, dear sir and friend, in this crowded Old 
World, there is not the same room that our bold fore- 
fathers found for men to walk about and jostle their 
neighbors No ; they must sit down like boys at their 
form, and vork out their tasks with rounded shoulders 
and aching fingers. There has been a pastoral ege, and 
a hunting age, and a fighting age. Now we have arrived 
at the age sedentary. Men who sit longest carry all 
before them ; puny delicate fellows, with hands just strong 
enough to wield a pen, eyes so bleared by the midnight 
lamp that they see no joy in that buxom sun (which draws 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


103 


me forth into the fields, as life draws the living), and 
digestive organs worn and macerated by the relentless 
flagellation of the brain. Certainly, if this is to be the 
Reign of Mind, it is idle to repine, and kick against the 
pricks ; but is it true that all these qualities of action that 
are within me are to go for nothing ? If I were rich and 
happy in mind and circumstances, well and good ; I should 
shoot, hunt, farm, travel, enjoy life, and snap my fingers 
at ambition. If I were so poor and so humbly bred that 
I could turn gamekeeper or whipper-in, as pauper gentle- 
men virtually did of old, well and good too ; I should 
exhaust this troublesome vitality of mine, by nightly 
battles with poachers, and leaps over double dykes and 
stone walls. If I were so depressed of spirit that I could 
live without remorse on my father’s small means, and 
exclaim with Claudian, ‘ The earth gives me feasts that 
cost nothing,’ well and good too ; that were a life to 
suit a vegetable, or a very minor poet. But as it is I — 
here I open another leaf of my heart to you I To say 
that, being poor, I want to make a fortune, is to say that 
I am an Englishman. To attach ourselves to a thing 
positive, belongs to our practical race. Even in our 
dreams, if we build castles in the air, they are not Castles 
of Indolence — indeed they have very little of the castle 
about them, and look much more like Hoare’s Bank on 
the east side of Temple Bar I I desire, then, to make a 
fortune. But I differ from my countrymen, first, by 
desiring only what you rich men would call but a small 
rortanc ; secondly, in wishing that I may not spend my 


104 


THE CAXTONS: 


whole life in that fortune-making. Just see, now, how 1 
am placed. 

Under ordinary circumstances, T must begin by taking 
from my father a large slice of an income that will ill 
spare paring. According to my calculation, my parents 
and my uncle want all they have got — and the subtraction 
of the yearly sum on which Pisistratus is to live, till he 
can live by his own labors, would be so much taken from 
the decent comforts of his kindred. If I return to 
Qambridge, with all economy, I must thus narrow still 
more the res angusta domi — and when Cambridge is 
over, and I am turned loose upon the world — failing, as 
is likely enough, of the support of a fellowship — how 
many years must I work, or rather, alas I not work, at 
the bar (which, after all, seems my best calling), before I 
can in my turn provide for those who, till then, rob them- 
selves for me ? — till I have arrived at middle life, and 
they are old and worn out — till the chink of the golden 
bowl sounds but hollow at the ebbing well I I would 
wish that, if I can make money, those I love best may 
enjoy it while enjoyment is yet left to them ; that my 
father shall see The History of Human Error complete, 
bound in russia on his shelves ; that my mother shall 
have the innocent pleasures that content her, before ago 
steals the light from her happy smile ; that before Roland’s 
hair is snow-white (alas 1 the snows there thicken fast), 
he shall lean on my arm, while we settle together where 
the ruin shall be repaired or where left to the owls ; and 
where the dreary bleak waste around shall laugh with the 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


105 


gleam of corn : — for you know the nature of this Cumber 
land soil — you, who possess much of it, and have won 
so many fair acres from the wild: — you know that my 
uncle’s land; now (save a single farm) scarce worth a 
shilling an acre, needs but capital to become an estate 
more lucrative than ever his ancestors owned. You know 
that, for you ha,ve applied your capital to the same kind 
of land, and, in doing so, what blessings — which you 
scarcely think of in your London library — you have 
effected I — what mouths you feed, what hands you employ I 
I have calculated that ray uncle’s moors, which now scarce 
maintain two or three shepherds, could, manured by money, 
maintain two hundred families by their labor. All this 
is worth trying for ! therefore Pisistratus wants to make 
money. Not so much! he does not require millions — 
a few spare thousand pounds would go a long way ; and 
with a modest capital to begin with, Roland should 
become a true squire, a real land-owner, not the mere lord 
of a desert. Now then, dear sir, advise me how I may, 
with such qualities as I possess, arrive at that capital — ■ 
ay, and before it is too late — so that money-making may 
not last till my grave. 

“ Turning in despair from this civilised world of ours, 
I have cast my eyes to a world far older — and yet more 
to a world in its giant childhood. India here — Australia 
there ! — what say you, sir — you who will see dispassion- 
utely those things that float before my eyes through a 
golden haze, looming large in the distance ? Sucli is my 
confidence in your judgment, tliat you have but to say, 


THE CAXTONS: 


106 

•Fool, give up tliine El Dorados and stay at home — 
stick to the books and the desk — annihilate that redun- 
dance of animal life that is in thee — grow a mental 
machine — thy physical gifts are of no avail to thee — 
take thy place among the slaves of the Lamp^ — and X 
will obey without a murmur. But if I am right — if f 
have in me attributes that here find no market ; if my 
repinings are but the instincts of nature, that, out of this 
decrepit civilisation, desire vent for growth in the young 
stir of some more rude and vigorous social system — then 
give me, I pray, that advice which may clothe my idea in 
some practical and tangible embodiments. Have I made 
myself understood ? 

“We take no newspaper here, but occasionally one 
finds its way from the parsonage ; and I have lately 
rejoiced at a paragraph that spoke of your speedy 
entrance into the administration as a thing certain. I 
write to you before you are a minister ; and you see what 
I seek is not in the way of official patronage : A niche 
in an office ! — oh, to me that were worse than all. Yet 
I did labor hard with you, but — that was different; I 
write to you thus frankly, knowing your warm, noble 
heart — and as if you were my father. Allow me to add 
my humble but earnest congratulations on Miss Treva- 
nion’s approaching marriage with one worthy, if not of 
her, at least of her station. I do so as becomes one whom 
you have allowed to retain the right to pray for the 
happiness of you and yours. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


107 


" My dear Mr. Trevanion, this is a long letter, and 1 
dare not even read it over, lest, if I do, I should not send 
it. Take it with all its faults, and judge of it with that 
kindness with which you have judged ever 

“Your grateful and devoted servant, 

“PiSISTRATUS CaxTON.” 


letter from albert trevanion, esq , M. P., TO PISIS- 
TRATUS CAXTON. 

Library of ihe House of Commons, Tuesday night. 

“ My bear PiSISTRATUS, — ***** is up I -vve are in for 
it for two mortal hours. I take flight to the library, and 
devote those hours to you. Don’t be conceited, but that 
picture of yourself which you have placed before me has 
struck me with all the force of an original. The state 
of mind which you describe so Vividly must be a very 
common one in our era of civilisation, yet I have never 
before seen it made so prominent and life-like. You have 
been in my thoughts all day. Yes, how many young men 
must there be like you, in this Old World, able, intelli- 
gent, active, and persevering enough, yet not adapted for 
success in any of our conventional professions — ‘mute, 
inglorious Raleighs.’ Your letter, young artist, is an 
illustration of the philosophy of colonising. I compre- 
hend better, after reading it, the old Greek colonisation 
— the sending out not only the paupers, the refuse of an 
over -pop dated state, but a large proportion of a better 


103 


THE CAXTONS: 


class — fellows full of pith and sap, and exuberant vitality, 
like yourself, blending, in those wise cleriichice, a certain 
portion of the aristocratic with the more democratic 
element ; not turning a rabble loose upon a new soil, but 
planting in the foreign allotments all the rudiments of an 
harmonious state, analogous to that in the mother country 
• — not only getting rid of hungry, craving mouths, but 
furnishing vent for a waste surplus of intelligence and 
courage, which at home is really not needed, and more 
often comes to ill than to good ; — here only menaces our 
artificial embankments, but there, carried off in an aque- 
duct, might give life to a desert. 

“ For my part, in my ideal of colonisation, I should 
like that each exportation of human beings had, as of 
old, its leaders and chiefs — not so appointed from the 
mere quality of rank, often, indeed, taken from the humbler 
classes — but still men to whom a certain degree of educa- 
tion should give promptitude, quickness, adaptability — 
men in whom their followers can confide. The Greeks 
understood that. Nay, as the colony makes progress — 
as its principal town rises into the dignity of a capital — 
a polis that needs a polity — I sometimes think it might 
be wise to go still farther, and not only transplant to it 
a high standard of civilisation, but draw it more closely 
into connection with the parent state, and render the 
passage of spare intellect, education, and civility, to and 
fro, more facile, by drafting off thither the spare scions 
of royalty itself. I know that many of my more ‘liberal’ 
friends would poohpooh this notion ; but 1 am sure that 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


109 


tbo colony altogether, when arrived to a state that would 
bear the importation, would thrive all the better for it. 
And when the day shall come (as to all healthful colonies 
it must come. sooner or later), in which the settlement has 
grown an independent state, we may thereby have laid 
the seeds of a constitution and a civilisation similar to our 
own — with self-developed forms of monarchy and aiis- 
tocracy, thougli of a simpler growth than old societies 
accept, and not left a strange motley chaos of struggling 
democracy — an uncouth livid giant, at which the Frank- 
enstein may well tremble — not because it is a giant, but 
because it is a giant half completed.* Depend on it, the 
New World will be friendly or hostile to the Old, not in 
proportion to the kinship of race, hut in proportion to 
the similarity of manners and institutions — a mighty 
truth to which we colonisers have been blind. 

“ Passing from these more distant speculations to this 
positive present before us, you see already, from what I 
have said, that I sympathise with your aspirations — that 
I construe them as you would have me ; — looking to your 
nature and to your objects, I give you my advice in a word 
— Emigrate I 

“ My advice is, however, founded on one hypothesis — 
viz., that you are perfectly sincere — you will be contented 

* These pages were sent to press before the author had seen 
Mr. Wakefield’s recent work on Colonisation, wherein the views here 
expressed are enforced with great earnestness and conspicuous 
sagacity. The author is not the less pleased at this coincidence of 
opinion, because he has the misfortune to dissent from certain other 
parts of Mr. Wakefield’s elaborate theory. 

II. — to 


110 


THE CAXTONS : 


with a rough life, and with a moderate fortune at the end 
of your probation. Don’t dream of emigrating if you 
want to make a million, or the tenth part of a million. 
Don’t dream of emigrating, unless you can enjoy its hard- 
s])ips, — to hear them is not enough ! 

“ Australia is the land for you as you seem to surmise. 
Australia is the land for two classes of emigrants ; 1st, 
The man who has nothing but his wits, and plenty of them . 
2ndly, The man who has a small capital, and who is con- 
tented to spend ten years in trebling it. I assume that 
you belong to the latter class. Take out £3,000, and, 
before you are thirty years old, you may return with 
£10,000 or £12,000. If that satisfies you, think seriously 
of Australia. By coach, to-morrow, I will send you down 
all the best books and reports on the subject ; and I will 
get you what detailed information I can from the Colonial 
Office. Having read these, and thought over them dis- 
passionately, spend some months yet among the sheep- 
walks of Cumberland ; learn all you can, from all the shep- 
herds you can find — from Thyrsis to Menalcas. Do more ; 
fit yourself in every way for a life in the Bush ; where the 
philosophy of the division of labor is not yet arrived at. 
Learn to turn your hand to everything. Be something 
of a smith, something of a carpenter — do the best yon 
can with the fewest tools ; make yourself an excellent 
shot; break in all the wild horses and ponies you can 
borrow and beg. Even if 3^011 want to do none of these 
things wlicn in your settlement, the having learned to do 
them will fit you for many other things not now foreseen. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


Ill 


De-Jine-gentlemanise yourself from the crown of your 
head to the sole of your foot, and become the greater 
aristocrat for so doing ; for he is more than an aristocrat, 
he is a king, who suffices in all things for himself — -who 
is his own master, because he wants no valetaille. I 
think Seneca has expressed that thought before me ; and 
I would quote the passage, but the book, I fear, is not in 
the library of the House of Commons. But now (cheers, 
by Jove I I suppose *****is down ! Ah ! it is so ; and 

C is up, and that cheer followed a sharp hit at me. 

How I wish I were your age, and going to Australia with 
you !) — But now — to resume my suspended period — but 
now to the important point — capital. You must take 
that, unless you go as a shepherd, and then good-bye to 
the idea of £10,000 in ten years. So, you see, it appears 
at the first blush that you must still come to your father ; 
but, you will say, with this difference, that you borrow 
the capital with every chance of repaying it, instead of 
frittering away the income year after year till you are 
eight-and-thirty or forty at least. Still, Pisistratus, you 
don’t, in this, gain your object at a leap ; and my dear 
old friend ought not to lose his son and his money too. 
You say you write to me as to your own father. You 
know I hate professions; and if you did not mean what 
you say, you have offended me mortally. As a father, 
then, I take a father’s rights, and speak plainly. A friend 
of mine, Mr. Bolding, a clergyman, has a son — a wild 
fellow, who is likely to get into all sorts of scrapes in 
England, but with plenty of good in him, notwithstanding 


112 


THE CAXTONS : 


— frank, bold — not wanting in talent, but rather in 
prudence — easily tempted and led away into extravagance, 
lie would make a capital colonist (no such temptations 
in the bush I) if tied to a youth like you. Now I propose, 
with your leave, that his father shall advance him £1,500, 
which shall not, however, be placed in his hands, but in 
yours, as head partner in the firm. You, on your side, 
shall advance the same sum of £1,500, which you shall 
borrow from me, for three years, without interest. At 
the end of that time, interest shall commence; and the 
capital, with the interest on the first three years, shall be 
repaid to me, or my executors, on your return. After you 
have been a year or two in the Bush, and felt your way, 
and learned your business, you may then safely borrow 
£1,500 more from your father; and, in the meanwhile, 
you and your partner will have had together the full sum 
of £3,000 to commence with. You see in this proposal 
I make you no gift, and I run no risk, even by your death. 
If you die insolvent I will promise to come on your father, 
poor fellow! — for small joy and small care will he have 
then in what may be left of his fortune. There — I have 
said all ; and I will never forgive you if you reject an aid 
that will serve you so much, and cost me so little. 

“I accept your congratulations on Fanny’s engagement 
with Lord Castleton. When you return from Australia 
you will still be a young man, she (though about your 
own years) almost a middle-aged woman, -with her head 
full of pomps and vanities. Ail girls have a short period 
of girlhood in common ; but wlicn they enter womanhood. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


113 


the woman becomes the woman of her class. As for me, 
and the office assigned to me by report, you know what 

I said when w'e parted, and — but here J comes, and 

tells me that ‘ I am expected to speak, and answer N , 

who is just up, brimful of malice,’ — the House crowded, 
and hungering for personalities. So I, the man of the 
Old World, gird up my loins, and leave you with a sigh, 
to the fresh youth of the New — 

“ *Ne tibi sit duros acuisse in prselia dentes.’ 

“ Yours affectionately, 
“Albert Trevanion.” 


CHAPTER YII. 

So, reader, thou art now at the secret of my heart. 

Wonder not that I, a bookman’s son, and, at certain 
periods of my life, a bookman myself, though of lowly 
grade in that venerable class — wonder not that I should 
thus, in that transition stage between youth and manhood, 
have turned impatiently from books. — Most students, at 
one time or other in their existence, have felt the imperious 
demand of that restless principle in man’s nature, which 
calls upon each son of Adam to contribute his share to 
the vast treasury of human deeds. And though great 
scholars are not necessarily, nor usually, men of action, 
— yet the • men of action whom History presents to our 
survey, have rarely been without a certain degree of 
scholarly nurture. For the ideas which books quicken, 
10 * H 


114 


THE CAXTONS: 


books caunot always satisfy. And thougb the royal pupil 
of Aristotle slept with Homer under his pillow, it was 
not that he might dream of composing epics, but of 
conquering new Ilions in the East. Many a man, how 
little soever resembling Alexander, may still have the 
conqueror’s aim in an object that action only can achieve, 
and the book under his pillow may be the strongest 
antidote to his repose. And how the stern Destinies that 
shall govern the man weave their first delicate tissues 
amidst the earliest associations of the child I — Those 
idle tales with which the old credulous nurse had beguiled 
my infancy — tales of wonder, knight-errantry, and ad- 
venture, had left behind them seeds long latent — seeds 
that might never have sprung up above the soil — but 
that my boyhood was so early put under the burning- 
glass, and in the quick forcing-house, of the London world. 
There, even amidst books and study, lively observation 
and petulant ambition broke forth from the lush foliage 
of romance — that fruitless leafiness of poetic youth I 
And there passion, which is a revolution in all the elements 
of individual man, had called a new state of being, turbu- 
lent and eager, out of the old habits and conventional 
forms it had buried — ashes that speak where the fire has 
been. Far from me, as from any mind of some manliness, 
be the attempt to create interest by dwelling at length on 
the struggles against a rash and misplaced attachment, 
which it was my duty to overcome ; but all such love, as 
I have before implied, is a terrible unsettler : — 

“ Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow.” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


115 


To re-enter boyliood, go with meek docility through its 
disciplined routine -J- how hard had I found that return, 
amidst the cloistered monotony of college I My love for 
my father, and my submission to his wish, had indeed 
given some animation to objects otherwise distasteful ; 
but, now that my return to the University must be attended 
with positive privation to those at home, the idea became 
utterly hateful and repugnant. Under pretence that I 
found myself, on trial, not yet sufficiently prepared to do 
credit to my father’s name, I had easily obtained leave to 
lose the ensuing college term, and pursue my studies at 
home. This gave me time to prepare my plans, and bring 
round — how shall I ever bring round to my adventurous 
views those whom I propose to desert ? Hard it is to 
get on in the world — very hard ! But the most painful 
step in the way is that which starts from the threshold of 
a beloved home. 

How — ah, how, indeed I ‘‘No, Blanche, you cannot 
join me to-day ; I am going out for many hours. So it 
will be late before T can be home.” 

Home ! — the word chokes me ! Juba slinks back to 
his young mistress, disconsolate ; Blanche gazes at me 
niefully from our favorite hill-top, and the flowers she has 
been gathering fall unheeded from her basket. I hear 
my mother’s voice singing low, as she sits at work by her 
open casement. How, — ah, how indeed I 


PART THIRTEENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

St. Chrysostom, in his work on the Priesthood, defends 
deceit, if for a good purpose, by many Scriptural examples ; 
ends his first book by asserting that it is often necessary, 
and that much benefit may arise from it ; and begins his 
second book by saying that it ought not to be called 
deceit, but good managemenV^ * 

Good management, then, let me call the innocent arts by 
which I now sought to insinuate my project into favor and 
assent with my unsuspecting family. At first I began with 
Roland. I easily induced him to read some of the books, 
full of the charm of Australian life, which Trevanion had 
sent me ; and so happily did those descriptions suit his 
own erratic tastes, and the free half-savage man that lay 
rough and large within that soldierly nature, that he him- 
self, as it were, seemed to suggest my own ardent desire 
— sighed, as the careworn Trevanion had done, that “ he 
was not my age,” and blew the flame that consumed me 


* Hohler’s Translation. 


( 116 ) 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


in 


with his own willing breath. So that when at last — ■ 
wandering one day over the wild moors — 1 said, knowing 
his hatred of law and lawyers — “ Alas, uncle, that nothing 
should be left for me but the bar I ” Captain Roland 
struck his cane into the peat, and exclaimed, “Zounds, 
sir I the bar and lying, with truth and a world fresh from 
God before you I ” 

“ Your hand, uncle — we understand each other. Now 
nelp me with those two quiet hearts at home 1 ” 

“ Plague on my tongue I what have I done ? ” said the 
Captain, looking aghast. Then, after musing a little 
time, he turned his dark eye on me, and growled out, “ I 
suspect, young sir, you have been laying a trap for me ; 
and I have fallen into it, like an old fool as I am.” 

“ Oh, sir, if you prefer the bar I ” 

“Rogue I” 

“Or, indeed, I might perhaps get a clerkship in a 
merchant’s office ? ” 

“ If you do, I will scratch you out of the pedigree 1 ” 

“ Huzza, then, for Australasia I ” 

“Well, well, well,” said my uncle, 

“ With a smile on his lip, and a tear in his eye ; ” 

“ the old sea-king’s blood will force its way — a soldier 
or a rover, there is no other choice for you. We shall 
mourn and miss you ; but who can chain the young eagles 
to the eyrie ? ” 

I had a harder task with my father, who at first seemed 
to listen to me as if I had been talking of an excursion 
to the moon. But I threw in a dexterous dose of the 

2a 


118 


TUE CAXTONS: 


old Greek Gleruchice — cited by Trevanion — which set 
him oflf full trot on his hobby, till after a short excursion 
to Euboea and the Chersonese, he was fairly lost amidst 
the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor. I then gradually and 
artfully decoyed him into his favorite science of Ethnology ; 
and, while he was speculating on the origin of the 
American savages, and considering the rival claims of 
Cimmerians, Israelites, and Scandinavians, I said quietly, 
— “ And you, sir, who think that all human improvement 
depends on the mixture of races — you, whose whole 
theory is an absolute sermon upon emigration, and the 
transplanting and interpolity of our species — you, sir, 
should be the last man to chain your son, your elder son, 
to the soil, while the younger is the very missionary of 
rovers.” 

“Pisistratus,” said my father, “you reason hj synec- 
doche — ornamental but illogical ; ” and therewith resolved 
to hear no more, my father rose and retreated into his 
study. 

But his observation, now quickened, began from that 
day to follow my moods and humors — then he Idmself 
grew silent and thoughtful, and finally he took to long 
conferences with Roland. The result was that, one 
evening in spring, as I lay listless amidst the weeds and 
fern that sprang up through the melancholy ruins, I felt 
r hand on my shoulder ; and my father, seating himself 

beside me on a fragment of stone, said earnestly 

“ Pisistratus, let us talk — I had hoped better tilings from 
your study of Robert Hall.” 


A PAMII^Y PICTURE. 


119 


“ Nay, dear father, the medicine did me great good ; I 
have not repined since, and I look steadfastly and cheer- 
fully on life. But Robert Hall fulfilled his mission, and 
[ would fulfil mine.'^ 

“ Is there no mission in thy native land, 0 planeticose 
and exallotriote spirit ? * asked my father, with com- 
passionate rebuke. 

“ Alas, yes I But what the impulse of genius is to the 
great, the instinct of vocation is to the mediocre. In 
every man there is a magnet ; in that thing which the 
man can do best there is a loadstone.” 

“ Papm I ” said my father, opening his eyes ; “ and are 
no loadstones to be found for you nearer than the Great 
Australasian Bight ? ” 

“Ah, sir, if you resort to irony, I can say no more I ” 

My father looked down on me tenderly, as I hung my 
head, moody and abashed. 

“ Son,” said he, “do you think that there is any real 
jest at my heart, when the matter discussed is whether 
you are to put wide seas and long years between us ? ” 

I pressed nearer to his side, and made no answer. 

“But I* have noted you of late,” continued my father, 
“and I have observed that your old studies are grown 
distasteful to you ; and I have talked with Roland, and 
I see that your desire is deeper than a boy’s mere whim. 
And then I have asked myself what prospect I can hold 
out at home to induce you to be contented here, and I 

* Words coined by Mr. Caxton from jrWjjrud?, disposed to roaming, 
and, ilaWorpibu), to export, to alienate. 


120 


THE CAXTONS: 


Bee none; and therefore I should say to you, ‘Go thy 
ways, and God shield thee — but, Pisistratus, your 
mother / ” 

“ Ah, sir, that is indeed the question I and there indeed 
I shrink. But, after all, whatever I were — whether toil 
ing at the bar, or in some public office — I should be still 
so much from home and her. And then you, sir, sht 
loves you so entirely, that 

“No,’^ interrupted my father; “you can advance no 
arguments like these to touch a mother’s heart. There is 
but one argument that comes home there — is it for your 
good to leave her ! If so, there will be no need of further 
words. But let us not decide that question hastily ; let 
you and I be together the next two months. Bring ^our 
books and sit with me ; when you want to go out, tap 
me on the shoulder, and say ‘ Come.’ At the end of those 
two months I will say to you, ‘ Go,’ or ‘ Stay.’ And you 
will trust me ; and if I say the last, you will submit ? ” 

“ Oh yes, sir — yes I ” 


CHAPTER II. 

This compact made, my father roused himself from all 

his studies — devoted his whole thoughts to me sought 

with all his gentle wisdom to wean me imperceptibly from 
my one fixed tyrannical idea, — ranged through his wide 
pharmacy of books for such medicaments as might alter 
the system of my thoughts. And little thought he that 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


121 


his very tenderness and wisdom worketi against him; for, 
at each new instance of either, my heart called aloud, “ Is 
it not that thy tenderness may be repaid, and thy wisdom 
be known abroad, that I go from thee into the strange 
land, 0 my father I ” 

And the two months expired, and my father saw that 
the magnet had turned unalterably to the loadstone in the 
great Australasian Bight ; and he said to me, “ Go, and 
comfort your mother. I have told her your wish, and 
authorised it by my consent, for I believe now that it is 
for your good.” 

I found my mother in the little room she had appro- 
priated to herself next my father’s study. And in that 
room there was a pathos which I have no words to 
express; for my mother’s meek, gentle, womanly soul 
spoke there, so that it was the Home of Home. The 
care with which she had transplanted from the brick 
house, and lovingly arranged, all the humble memorials 
of old times, dear to her affections — the black silhouette 
of my father’s profile cut in paper, in the full pomp of 
academics, cap and gown (how had he ever consented to 
sit for it I ) framed and glazed in the place of honor over 
the little hearth ; and boyish sketches of mine at the 
Hellenic Institute, first essays in sepia and Indian-ink, to 
animate the walls, and bring her back, when she sat there 
in the twilight, musing alone, to sunny hours, when Sisty 
and the young mother threw daisies at each other ; — and 
covered with a great glass shade, and dusted each day 
with her own hand, the flower-pot Sisty had bought with 

II. — 11 


122 


THE CAXTONS: 


the proceeds of the domino-box, on that memorable occa 
sion on which he had learned “ how bad deeds are repaid 
with good. ” There, in one corner, stood the little cottage 
piano, which I remembered all my life — old-fashioned, 
and with the jingling voice of approaching decreptitude, 
but still associated with such melodies as, after childhood, 
we hear never more I And in the modest hanging shelves, 
which looked so gay with ribbons, and tassels, and silken 
cords — my mother’s own library, saying more to the 
heart than all the cold wise poets whose souls my father 
invoked in his grand Heraclea. The Bible over which, 
with eyes yet untaught to read, I had hung in vague awe 
and love, as it lay open on my mother’s lap, while her 
sweet voice, then only serious, was made the oracle of its 
truths. And my first-lesson books were there, all hoarded. 
And bound in blue and gold, but elaborately papered up, 
Cowper^s Poems — a gift from my father in the days of 
courtship — sacred treasure, which not even I had the 
privilege to touch ; and which my mother took out only 
in the great crosses and trials of conjugal life, whenever 
some words less kind than usual had dropped unawares 
from her scholar’s absent lips. Ah 1 all these poor house- 
hold gods, all seemed to look on me with mild anger ; and 
from all came a voice to my soul, “ Cruel, dost thou for- 
sake us I ” And amongst them sat my mother, desolate 
as Rachel, and weeping silently. 

“ Mother 1 mother 1 ” I cried, fal ing on her neck, for- 
give me- — it is past — I cannot eave you I” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


123 


CHAPTER III. 

“No — no I it is for your good — Austin rjays so. Go 
- it is but the first shock.” 

Then to my mother I opened the sluices of that deep I 
had concealed from scholar and soldier. To her I poured 
all the wild, restless thoughts which wandered through 
the ruins of love destroyed — to her I confessed what to 
myself I had scarcely before avowed. And when the 
picture of that, the darker, side of ray mind was shown, 
it was with a prouder face, and less broken voice, that I 
spoke of the manlier hopes and nobler aims that gleamed 
across the wrecks and the desert, and showed me my 
escape. 

“ Hid you not once say, mother, that you had felt it like 
a remorse, that my father’s genius passed so noiselessly 
away — half accusing the happiness you gave him for the 
death of his ambition in the content of his mind ? Did 
you not feel a new object in life when the ambition revived 
at last, and you thought you heard the applause of the 
world murmuring round your scholar’s cell ? Did you not 
share in the day-dreams your brother conjured up, and 
exclaim, ‘ If my brother could be the means of raising him 
in the world I ’ and when you thought we had found the 
w.ay to fame and fortune, did you not sob out from your 


124 


THE CAXTONS: 


full heart, ‘And it is my brother who will pay back to h** 
son — all — all he gave up for me’?’’ 

“I cannot bear this, Sisty I — cease, cease I ” 

“ No ; for do you not yet understand me ? Will it not 
be better still, if your son — yours — restore to your 
Austin all that he lost, no matter how ? If through your 
son, mother, you do indeed make the world hear of your 
husband’s genius — restore the spring to his mind, the 
glory to his pursuits — if you rebuild even that vaunted 
ancestral name, which is glory to our poor sonless Roland 
— if your son can restore the decay of generations, and 
reconstruct from the dust the whole house into which you 
have entered, its meek presiding angel ? — ah, mother I if 
this can be done, it will be your work ; for unless you can 
share my ambition — unless you can dry those eyes, and 
smile in my face, and bid me go, with a cheerful voice — 
all my courage melts from my heart, and again I say, I 
cannot leave you I ” 

Then my mother folded her arms round me, and we both 
wept, and could not speak — but we were both happy. 


CHAPTER lY. 

Now the worst was over, and my mother was the most 
heroic of us all. So I began to prepare myself in good 
earnest, and I followed Trevanion’s instructions with a 
perseverance which I could never, at that young day, 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 125 

have thrown into the dead life of books. I was in a good 
school, amongst our Cumberland sheep-walks, to learn 
those simple elements of rural art which belong to the 
pastoral state. Mr. Sidney, in his admirable Australian 
Handbook^ recommends young gentleman who think of 
becoming settlers in the Bush to bivouac for three months 
on Salisbury Plain. That book was not then written, or 
I might have taken the advice ; meanwhile, I think, with 
due respect to such authority, that I went through a 
preparatory training quite as useful in seasoning the 
future emigrant. I associated readily with the kindly 
peasants and craftsmen, who became my teachers. With 
what pride I presented my father with a desk, and my 
mother with a work-box, fashioned by my own hands I I 
made Bolt a lock for his plate-chest, and (that last was 
my magnum opus, my great masterpiece) I repaired and 
absolutely set going an old turret-clock in the tower, that 
had stood at 2 P. m. since the memory of man. I loved 
to think, each time the hour sounded, that those who 
heard its deep chime would remember me. But the flocks 
were my main care : the sheep that I tended and helped 
to shear, and the lamb that I hooked out of the great 
marsh, and the three venerable ewes that I nursed through 
a mysterious sort of murrain, which puzzled all the neigh- 
borhood — are they not written in thy loving chronicles, 
0 House of Caxton 1 

And now, since much of the success of my experiment 
must depend on the friendly terms I could establish with 
my intended partner, I wrote to Trevanion, begging him 

!!♦ 


126 


THE CAXTONS; 


to get the young gentleman who was to join me, and 
whose capital I was to administer, to come and visit us. 
Trevanion complied, and there arrived a tall fellow, some- 
what more than six feet high, answering to the name of 
Guy Bolding, in a cut-away sporting-coat, with a dog- 
whistle tied to the butfon-hole ; drab shorts and gaiters, 
and a waistcoat with all manner of strange furtive pockets. 
Guy Bolding had lived a year and a half at Oxford as a 
“ fast man ; ” so “ fast ” had he lived, that there wa^ 
scarcely a tradesman at Oxford into whose books he had 
not contrived to run. 

His father was compelled to withdraw him from the 
university, at which he had already had the honor of being 
plucked for “ the little go ; ” and the young gentleman, 
on being asked for what profession he was fit, had replied 
with conscious pride : “ That he could tool a coach 1 ” In 
despair, the sire, who owed his living to Trevanion, had 
asked the statesman’s advice, and the advice had fixed me 
with a partner in expatriation. 

My first feeling in greeting the “fast” man was certainly 
that of deep disappointment and strong repugnance. But 
I was determined not to be too fastidious ; and, having a 
lucky knack of suiting myself pretty well to all tempers 
(without which a man had better not think of loadstones 
in the great Australasian Bight), I contrived before the 
first week was out to establish so many points of con- 
nection between us, that we became the best friends in the 
world. Indeed, it would have been my fault if we had 
not, for Guy Bolding, with all his faults, was one of those 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


125 


excellent creatures who are nobody’s enemies but their 
own. His good humor was inexhaustible. Not a hard- 
ship or privation came amiss to him. He had a phrase 
“ Such fun 1 ” that always rushed laughingly to his lips 
when another man would have cursed and groaned. If 
we lost our way in the great trackless moors, missed our 
dinner, and were half-famished, Guy rubbed hands that 
would have felled an ox, and chuckled out, “ Such fun 1 ” 
If we stuck in a bog, if we were caught in a thunder- 
storm, if we were pitched head-over-heels by the wild 
colts we undertook to break in, Guy Bolding’s sole elegy 
was “ Such fun I ” That grand shibboleth of philosophy 
only forsook him at the sight of an open book. I don’t 
think that, at that time, he could have found “fun” eve. 
in Don Quixote. This hilarious temperament had no 
insensibility ; a kinder heart never beat — but, to be sure, 
it beat to a strange, restless, tarantula sort of measure, 
which kept it in a perpetual dance. It made him one of 
those officiously good fellows, who are never quiet them- 
selves, and never let any one else be quiet if they can help 
it. But Guy’s great fault, in this prudent world, was his 
absolute incontinence of money. If you had turned a 
Euphrates of gold into his pockets at morning, it would 
have been as dry as the great Sahara by twelve at noon 
What he did with the money was a mystery as much to 
himseli as to every one else. His father said in a lette. 
to me, that “he had seen him shying at sparrows with 
half-crowns 1 ” That such a young man could come to no 
good in England, seemed perfectly clear. Still, it is 


128 


THE CAXTONS: 


recorded of many great men, who did not end their daya 
in a workhouse, that they were equally non-retentive of 
money. Schiller, when he had nothing else to give away^ 
gave the clothes from his back, and Goldsmith the blankets 
from his bed. Tender hands found it necessary to pick 
Beethoven’s pockets at home before he walked out. 
Great heroes, who have made no scruple of robbing the 
whole world, have been just as lavish as poor poets and 
musicians. Alexander, in parcelling out his spoils, left 
himself “hope I” And as for Julius Caesar, he was twc 
millions in debt when he shied his last half-crown at the 
sparrows in Gaul. Encouraged by these illustrious exam 
pies, I had hopes of Guy Bolding ; and the more as he 
was so aware of his own infirmity that he was perfectly 
contented with the arrangement which made me treasurer 
of his capital, and even besought me, on no account, let 
him beg ever so hard, to permit his own money to comt 
in his own way. In fact, I contrived to gain a great 
ascendency over his simple, generous, thoughtless nature ; 
and by artful appeals to his affections — to all he owed 
to his father for many bootless sacrifices, and to the duty 
of providing a little dower for his infant sister, whose 
meditated portion had half gone to pay his college debts 
— I at last succeeded in fixing into his mind an object to 
save for. 

Three other companions did I select for our Clcruchia. 
The first was the son of our old shepherd, who had lately 

married, but was not yet encumbered with children, a 

good shepherd, and an intelligent, steady fellow The 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


129 


second was a very different character ; he had been the 
dread of the whole squirearchy. A more bold and dex- 
terous poacher did not exist. Now my acquaintance with 
this latter person, named Will Peterson, and more pop- 
ularly “Will o’ the Wisp,” had commenced thus : — Bolt 
had managed to rear in a small copse about a mile from 
the house — and which was the only bit of ground in my 
uncle’s domains that might by courtesy be called “a 
wood” — a young colony of pheasants, that he dignified 
by the title of a “ preserve. ” This colony was audaciously 
despoiled and grievously depopulated, in spite of two 
watchers, who, with Bolt, guarded for seven nights suc- 
cessively the slumbers of the infant settlement. So insolent 
was the assault, that bang, bang, went the felonious gun 

— behind, before — within but a few yards of the sentinels 

— and the gunner was off, and the prey seized, before 
they could rush to the spot. The boldness and skill of 
the enemy soon proclaimed him, to the experienced 
watchers, to be Will o’ the Wisp : and so great was their 
dread of this fellow’s strength and courage, and so 
complete their despair of being a match for his swiftness 
and cunning, that after the seventh night the watchers 
refused to go out any longer ; and poor Bolt himself was 
confined to his bed by an attack of what a doctor would 
have called rheumatism, and a moralist, rage. My indig- 
nation and sympathy were greatly excited by this morti- 
fying failure, and my interest romantically aroused by the 
anecdotes I had heard of Will o’ the Wisp ; accordingly, 
arn od with a thick bludgeon, I stole out at night, and 


I 


130 


THE CAXTONS: 


took my way to the copse. The leaves were not off the 
trees, and how the poacher contrived to see his victims I 
know not; but five shots did he fire, and not in vain, 
without allowing me to catch a glimpse of him. I then 
retreated to the outskirt of the copse, and waited patiently 
by an angle, which commanded two sides of the wood. 
Just as the dawn began to peep, I saw my man emerge 
within twenty yards of me. I held my breath, suffered 
him to get a few steps from the wood, crept on so as to 
intercept his retreat, and then pounce — such a bound! 
My hand was on his shoulder — prr, prr, — no eel was 
ever more lubricate. He slid from me like a thing imma- 
terial, and was off over the moors with a swiftness which 
might well have baffled any clodhopper — a race whose 
calves are generally absorbed in the soles of their hobnail 
shoes. But the Hellenic Institute, with its classical gym- 
nasia, had trained its pupils in all bodily exercises ; and 
though the Will o’ the Wisp was swift for a clodhopper, 
he was no match at running for any youth who has spent 
his boyhood in the discipline of cricket, prisoner’s bar, 
and hunt-the-hare. I reached him at length, and brought 
him to bay. 

“ Stand back I ” said he, panting, and taking aim with 
his gun: “it is loaded.” 

“Yes,” said I; “but though you’re a brave poacher, 
you dare not fire at your fellow-man. Give up the gun 
this instant.” 

My address took him by surprise ; he did not fire. I 
struck up the barrel, and closed on him We grappled 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


131 


pretty tightly, and in the wrestle the gun went off. The 
man loosened his hold. “ Lord ha’ mercy I I have not 
hurt you ? ” he said falteringly. 

“My good fellow — -no,” said I ; “ and now let us throw 
aside gun and bludgeon, and fight it out like Englishmen, 
or else let us sit down and talk it over like friends.” 

The Will o’ the Wisp scratched its head and laughed. 

“Well, you’re a queer one 1 ” quoth it. And the 
poacher dropped the gun and sat down. 

We did talk it over, and I obtained Peterson’s promise 
to respect the preserve henceforth ; and- we thereon grew 
so cordial that he walked home with me, and even pre- 
sented me, shyly and apologetically, with the five pheasants 
he had shot. From that time I sought him out. He 
was a young fellow not four-and-twenty, who had taken 
to poaching from the wild sport of the thing, and from 
some confused notions that he had a license from nature 
to poach. I soon found out that he was meant for better 
things than to spend* six months of the twelve in prison, 
and finish his life on the gallows after killing a game- 
keeper That seemed to me his most probable destiny 
in the Old World, so I talked him into a burning desire 
for the New one : and a most valuable aid in the Bush he 
proved too. 

My third selection was in a personage who could bring 
little physical strength to help us, but who had more mind 
(though with a wrong twist in it) than both the otliers 
put logcther. 

A worthy couple in the village had a son, who being 


132 


THE CAXTONS: 


sliglit and puny, compared to the Cumberland breed, was 
shouldered out of the market of agricultural labor, and 
went off, yet a boy, to a manufacturing town. Now about 
the age of thirty, this mechanic, disabled for his work by 
a long illness, came home to recover ; and in a short time 
we heard of nothing but the pestilential doctrines with 
which he was either shocking or infecting our primitive 
villagers. According to report, Corcyra itself never 
engendered a democrat more awful. The poor man was 
really very ill, and his parents very poor ; but his unfor- 
tunate doctrines dried up all the streams of charity that 
usually flowed through our kindly hamlet. The clergyman 
(an excellent man, but of the old school) walked by the 
house as if it were tabooed. The apothecary said, “Miles 
Square ought to have wine ; ” but he did not send him 
any. The farmers held his name in execration, for he 
had incited all their laborers to strike for another shilling 
a week. And but for the old Tower, Miles Square would 
soon have found his way to the only republic in which he 
could obtain that democratic fraternisation for which he 
sighed — the grave being, I suspect, the sole common- 
wealth which attains that dead flat of social equality that 
life in its every principle so heartily abhors. 

My uncle went to see Miles Square, and came back the 
color of purple. Miles Square had preached him a long 
sermon on the unholiuess of war. “ Even in defence of 
your king and country I ” had roared the Captain ; and 
Miles Square had replied with a remark upon kings in 
general, that the Captain could not have repeated withoin 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


133 


expecting to see the old Tower fall about his ears ; and 
with an observation about the country in particular, to 
the effect that “ the country would be much better off if 
it were conquered I ” On hearing the report of these 
loyal and patriotic replies, my father said “ Papae I ’’ and, 
roused out of his usual philosophical indifference, went 
himself to visit Miles Square. My father returned as pale 
as my uncle had been purple. “And to think,’' said he, 
mournfully, “that in the town whence this man comes, 
there are, he tells me, ten thousand other of God’s crea- 
tures who speed the work of civilisation while execrating 
its laws I ” 

But neither father nor uncle made any opposition when, 
with a basket laden with wine and arrow-root, and a neat 
little Bible, bound in brown, my mother took her way to 
the excommunicated cottage. Her visit was as signal a 
failure as those that preceded it. Miles Square refused 
the basket ; “ he was not going to accept alms, and eat 
the bread of charity ; ” and on my mother meekly suggest- 
ing that, “if Mr. Miles Square would condescend to look 
into the Bible, he would see that even charity was no sin 
in giver or recipient,” Mr. Miles Square had undertaken 
to prove, “that, according to the Bible, he had as much 
a right to my mother’s property^as she had — that all 
things should be in common — and, when all things were 
in common, what became of charity? Ho; he could not 
eat my uncle’s arrow-root, and drink his wine, while my 
uncle was improperly withholding from him and his fellow- 
sreatures so many unprofitable acres : the land belonged 

II - 12 2ii 


134 


THE CAXTONS: 


to the people.” It was now the turn of Pisistratus to go 
He went once, and he went often. Miles Square and 
Pisistratus wrangled and argued — argued and wrangled 
— and ended by taking a fancy to each other ; for this 
poor Miles Square was not half so bad as his doctrines. 
Ilis errors arose from intense sympathy with the suffer- 
ings he had witnessed, amidst the misery which accom- 
panies the reign of millocratism, and from the vague 
aspirations of a half-taught, impassioned, earnest nature. 
By degrees, I persuaded him to drink the wine, and eat 
the arrow-root, en attendant that millennium which was 
to restore the land to the people. And then my mother 
came again and softened his heart, and, for the first time 
in his life, let into its cold crotchets the warm light of 
human gratitude. I lent him some books, amongst others 
a few volumes on Australia. A passage in one of the 
latter, in which it was said “ that an intelligent mechanic 
usually made his way in the colony, even as a shepherd, 
better than a dull agricultural laborer,” caught hold of 
his fancy, and seduced his aspirations into a healthful 
direction. Finally, as he recovered, he entreated me to 
let him accompany me. And as I may not have to return 
to Miles Square, I think it right here to state, that he did 
go with me to Australia, and did succeed, first as a 
shepherd, next as a superintendant, and finally, on saving 
money, as a land-owner ; and that, in spite of his opinions 
of the unholiness of war, he was no sooner in possession 
of a comfortable log homestead, than he defended it with 
uncommon gallantry against an attack of the aborigiae/t, 


A FAMILY l-ICTURE. 


135 


whose right to the soil was, to say the least of it, as good 
as his claim to my uncle’s acres j that he commemorated 
his subsequent acquisition of a fresh allotment, with the 
stock on it, by a little pamphlet, published at Sydney, on 
the Sanctity of the Rights of Property ; and that, when 
I left the colony, having been much pestered by two 
refractory “ helps ” that he had added to his establishment, 
he had just distinguished himself by a very anti-levelling 
lecture upon the duties of servants to their employers. 
What would the Old World have done for this man I 


CHAPTER Y. 

I HAD not been in haste to conclude my arrangements, 
for, independently of my wish to render myself acquainted 
with the small useful crafts that might be necessary to me 
in a life that makes the individual man a state in himself, 
I naturally desired to habituate my kindred to the idea 
of our separation, and to plan and provide for them all 
such substitutes or distractions, in compensation for my 
loss, as my fertile imagination could suggest. At first, 
for the sake of Blanche, Roland, and my mother, I talked 
the Captain into reluctant sanction of his sister-in-law’s 
proposal, to unite their incomes and share alike, without 
considering which party brought the larger proportion 
into the firm. I represented to him that, unless he made 
that sacrifice of his pride, my mother would be wholly 


136 


THE CAXTONS : 


without lliose little notable uses and objects, those small 
household pleasures, so dear to woman ; that all society 
in the neighborhood would be impossible, and that my 
mother’s time would hang so heavily on her hands, that 
her only resource would be to muse on the absent one, 
and fret. Nay, if Jhe persisted in so false a pride, I to hi 
him, fairly, that I should urge my father to leave the 
Tower. These representations succeeded, and hospitality 
had commenced in the old hall, and a knot of gossips had 
centred round my mother — groups of laughing children 
had relaxed the still brow of Blanche — and the Captain 
himself was a more cheerful and social man. My next 
point was to engage my father in the completion of the 
Great Book. “Ah, sir,” said I, “give me an inducement 
to toil, a reward for my industry. Let me think, in each 
tempting pleasure, each costly vice — No, no ; I will save 
for the Great Book ! and the memory of the father shall 
still keep the son from error. Ah, look you, sir 1 Mr. 
Trevanion offered me the loan of the 1500Z. necessary to 
commence with ; but you generously and at once said — ■ 
‘No; you must not begin life under the load of debt’ 
And I knew you were right, and yielded — yielded the 
more gratefully that I could not but forfeit something of 
the just pride of manhood in incurring such an obligation 
to the father of — Miss Trevanion. Therefore I have 
taken that sum from you — a sum that would almost have 
sufficed to establish your younger and worthier child in 
the world for ever. To that child let me repay it, other- 
wise I will not take it. Let me hold it as a trust for the 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 13!| 

13-reat Book ; and promise me that the Great Book shaK 
be ready when your wanderer returns, and accounts for 
the missing talent.” 

And my father pished a little, and rubbed off the dew 
that had gathered on his spectacles. But I would not 
leave him in peace till he had given me his word that the 
Great Book should go on d pas du giant — nay, till I had 
seen him sit down to it with good heart, and the wheel 
went round again in the quiet mechanism of that gentle 
life. 

Finally, and as the culminating acme of my diplomacy, 
I effected the purchase of the neighboring apothecary’s 
practice and good-will for Squills, upon terms which he 
willingly subscribed to ; for the poor man had pined at 
the loss of his favorite patients, though. Heaven knows, 
they did not add much to his income. And as for my 
father, there was no man who diverted him more than 
Squills, though he accused him of being a materialist, 
and set his whole spiritual pack of sages to worry and 
bark at him, from Plato and Zeno to Reid and Abraham 
Tucker. 

Thus, although I have very loosely intimated the flight 
of time, more than a whole year elapsed from the date of 
our settlement at the Tower and that fixed for my de- 
parture. 

In the meanwhile, despite the rarity amongst us of that 
phenomenon, a newspaper, we were not so utterly cut off 
from the sounds of the far-booming world beyond, but 
what the intelligence of a change in the administration 

12 * 


138 


THE CAXTONS: 


and tlie appointment of Mr. Trevanion to one of the great 
offices of state, reached our ears. I had kept up no cor- 
respondence with Trevanion subsequent to the letter that 
occasioned Guy Bolding’s visit ; I wrote now to congrat- 
ulate him : his reply was short and hurried. 

An intelligence that startled me more, and more deeply 
moved my heart, was conveyed to me, some three months 
or so before my departure, by Trevanion’s steward. The 
ill-health of Lord Castleton had deferred his marriage, 
intended originally to be celebrated as soon as he arrived 
of age. He left the university with the honors of a “ a 
double first class ; ” and his constitution appeared to rally 
from the effects of studies more severe to him than they 
might have been to a man of quicker and more brilliant 
capacities — when a feverish cold, caught at a county 
meeting, in which his first public appearance was so cred- 
itable as fully to justify the warmest hopes of his party, 
produced inflammation of the lungs, and ended fatally. 
The startling contrast forced on my mind — here, sudden 
death and cold clay — there, youth in its first flower, 
princely rank, boundless wealth, the sanguine expectation 
of an illustrious career, and the prospect of that happi- 
ness which smiled from the eyes of Fanny — that contrast 
impressed me with a strange awe : death seems so near 
to us when it strikes those whom life most flatters and 
caresses. Whence is that curious sympathy that we all 
have with the possessors of worldly greatness, v/hen the 
hour-glass is shaken and the scythe descends ? If the 
famous meeting between Diogenes and Alexander had 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


13S 


taken place not before, but after the achievements which 
gave to Alexander the name of Great, the cynic would 
not, perhaps, have envied the hero his pleasures nor his 
splendors — neither the charms of Statira nor the tiara of 
the Mede ; but if, the day after, a cry had gone forth, 
* Alexander is dead I ” verily I believe that Diogenes 
would have coiled himself up in his tub, and felt that with 
the shadow of the stately hero, something of glory and 
of warmth had gone from that sun, which it should darken 
never more. In the nature of man, the humblest or the 
hardest, there is a something that lives in all of the Beau- 
tiful or the Fortunate, which hope and desire have appro- 
priated, even in the vanities of a childish dream. 


CHAPTER VI. 

‘‘Why are you here all alone, cousin? How cold and 
still it is amongst the graves ! ” 

“ Sit down beside me, Blanche ; it is not colder in the 
churchyard than on the village green. 

A nd Blanche sat down beside me, nestled close to me, 
and leant her hand upon my shoulder. We were both 
long silent. It was an evening in the early spring, clear 
and serene — the roseate streaks were fading gradually 
from the dark grey of long, narrow, fantastic clouds. 
Tall leafless poplars, that stood in orderly level line, on 
the lowland between the churchyard and the hill, with its 


140 


THE CAXTONS: 


crown of ruins, left their sharp summits distinct against 
the sky. But the shadows coiled dull and heavy round 
the evergreens that skirted the churchyard, so that their 
outline was vague and confused ; and there was a depth 
in that lonely stillness, broken only when the thrush flew 
from the lower bushes, and the thick laurel leaves stirred 
reluctantly, and again were rigid in repose. There is a 
certain melancholy in the evenings of early spring, which 
is among those influences of Nature the most universally 
recognised, the most diflBcult to explain. The silent stir 
of revivihg life, which does not yet betray signs in the bud 
and blossom — only in a softer clearness in the air, a more 
lingering pause in the slowly lengthening day ; a more 
delicate freshness and balm in the twilight atmosphere ; a 
more lively, yet still unquiet note from the birds, settling 
down into their coverts ; — the vague sense under all that 
hush, which still outwardly wears the bleak sterility of 
winter — of the busy change, hourly, momently, at work 
— renewing the yOuth of the world, reclothing with vig- 
orous bloom the skeletons of things — all these messages 
from the heart of Nature to the heart of Man may well 
affect and move us. But why with melancholy? No 
thought on our part connects and construes the low, 
gentle voices. It i^ not thought that replies and reasons : 
it feeling that hears and dreams. Examine not, O child 
of man I — examine not that mysterious melancloly with 
the hard eyes of thy reason ; thou canst not impale it on 
the spikes of thy thorny logic, nor describe its enchanted 
gircle by problems conned from thy schools. Borderer 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


141 


thyself of two worlds — ^tlie Dead and the Living — give 
thine - ear to the tones, bow thy soul to the shadows, that 
steal, ill the Season<:of Change, from. the dim Border 
Land. .i : v • ^ 

Blanche (in a whisper). — What are you thinking of? 
— speak, pray I 

PISISTRATUS.— I was not thinking, Blanche; or, if I 
w ere, the thought is gone at the mere effort to seize or 
detain it. - - ’ 

' Blanche (after a pause). — I know what you mean. It 
is the same with me. often — so often when I am sitting 
by myself, quite still. It is just like the story Primmins 
was telling us the other evening,* “how there was a woman 
in her village who saw things and people in a piece of 
crystal, not bigger than my hand ; * they passed along as 
large as life, but they were only pictures in the, crystal:’’ 
Since I heard the story, when aunt asks me what I am 
thinking of, I long to say, “ I’m not thinking I I am seeing 
pictures in the crystal!” . ' , 

PisiSTRATUS. — Tell my father that;, it will please him 

* In primitive villages, in the west .of England, the belief that 
the absent may be seen in a piece of crystal is, or was not many 
years ago, by no means an uncommon superstition; I have seen 
more than one of these .magic mirrors, which Spenser, by the way, 
has beautifully described. They are about the size and shape of a 
swan’s egg. It is not every one, however,' who can be a crystal- 
seer; like second-sight, it is a special gift. ‘N. B. — Since the above 
note (appended to. the first edition of this work) . was written, 
crystals and crystal-seers have become very familiar to those who 
interest themselves in speculations upon the disputed phenomena 
ascribed to Mesmerical Clairvoyance. • . 


142 


THE CAXTONS : 


There is more philosophy in it than you are aw^are of, 
Blanche. There are wise men who have thought the whole 
world, its “pride, pomp, and circumstance,” only a 
phantom image — a picture in the crystal. 

Blanche. — And I shall see you — see us both, as we 
are sitting here — and that star which has just risen 
yonder — see it all in my crystal — when you are gone I — 
gone, cousin 1 (And Blanche’s head drooped.) 

There was something so quiet and deep in the tender- 
ness of this poor motherless child, that it did not affect 
one superficially, like a child’s loud momentary affection, 
in which we know that the first toy will replace us. I 
kissed my little cousin’s pale face, and said, “And I too, 
Blanche, have my crystal ; and when I consult it, I shall 
be very angry if I see you sad and fretting, or seated 
alone. For you must know, Blanche, that that is all 
selfishness. God made us, not to indulge only in crystal 
pictures, weave idle fancies, pine alone, and mourn over 
what we cannot help — but to be alert and active — givers 
of happiness. Now, Blanche, see what a trust I am 
going to bequeath you. You are to supply my place to 
all whom I leave. You are to bring sunshine wherever 
you glide with that shy, soft step -- whether to your 
father, when you see his brows knit and his arms crossed 
(that, indeed, you always do), or to mine, when the volume 
drops from his hand — when he walks to and fro the room, 
restless, and murmuring to himself— then you are to steal 
up to him, put your hand in his, lead him back to his 
books, and whisper, ‘ What will Sisty say if his younger 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


143 


brother, the Great Book, is not grown up when he comes 
back ? ’ — And my poor mother, Blanche I — ah, how can 
I counsel you there — how tell you where to find comfort 
for her ? Only, Blanche, steal into her heart and be her 
daughter. And, to fulfil this threefold trust, you must 
not content yourself with seeing pictures in the crystal — 
do you understand me ? ” 

“Oh yes,” said Blanche, raising her eyes, while the 
tears rolled from them, and folding her arms resolutely 
on her breast. 

“And so,” said I, “as we two, sitting in this quiet 
burial-ground, take new heart for the duties and cares of 
life, so see, Blanche, how the stars come out, one by one, 
to smile upon us ; for they, too, glorious orbs as they are, 
perform their appointed tasks. Things seem to approxi- 
mate to God in proportion to their vitality and move- 
ment. Of all things, least inert and sullen should be the 
soul of man. How the grass grows up over the very 
graves — quickly it grows and greenly — but neither so 
quick nor so green, my Blanche, as hope and comfort from 
human sorrows.” 


PART FOURTEENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

There is a beautiful and singular passage in Dante 
(which has not perhaps attracted the attention it deserves), 
wherein the stern Florentine defends Fortune from the 
popular accusations against her. According to him, she 
is an angelic power appointed by the Supreme Being to 
direct and order the course of human splendors ; she 
obeys the will of God j she is blessed, and, hearing not 
those who blaspheme her,, calm and aloft amongst the 
other angelic powers, revolves her spheral course, and 
rejoices in her beatitude.* , . 

This is a conception very different from the popular 
notion which Aristophanes, in his true instinct of things 
popular, expresses by the sullen lips of his Plutus. That 
deity accounts for his blindness by saying, that “ when a 
boy, he had indiscreetly promised to visit only the good,” 


* Dante here evidently associates Fortune with the planetary 
influences of judicial astrology. It is doubtful whether Schiller 
ever read Dante; but in one of his most thoughtful poems he 
undertakes the same defence of Fortune, making the Fortunate a 
part of the Beautiful. 


( 144 ^ 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


145 


and Jupiter was so envious of the good that he blinded 
the poor money-god. Whereon Chremylus asks him, 
whether, “if he recovered his sight, he would frequent 
the company of the good ? ’’ “ Certainly,” quoth Plutus, 

“for I have not seen them ever so long.” “Nor I 
either,” rejoins Chremylus, pithily, “ for all I can see out 
of both eyes.” 

But that misanthropical answer of Chremylus is neither 
here nor there, and only diverts us from the real question, 
and that is, “ Whether Fortune be a heavenly, Christian 
angel, or a blind, blundering, old heathen deity ? ” For 
my part, I hold with Dante — ^^for which, if I were so 
pleased, or if, at this period of my memoirs, I had half-a- 
dozen pages to spare, I could give many good reasons. 
One thing, however, is quite clear — that; whether Fortune 
be more like Plutus or an angel, it is no use abusing her — 
one may as well throw stones at a star. And I think if 
one looked narrowly at her operations, one might perceive 
that she gives every man a chance, at least once in his 
life ; if he take and make the best of it, she will renew 
her visits; if not, itur ad astra! And therewith I am 
reminded of an incident quaintly narrated by Mariana in 
his “History of Spain,” how the army of the Spanish 
kings got out of a sad hobble among the mountains at 
the Pass of Losa, by the help of a shepherd, who showed 
them the way. “But,” saith Mariana, parenthetically, 
“some do say the shepherd was an angel; for, after he 
had shown the way, he was never seen more.” That is, 
the angelic nature of the guide was proved by being only 

II. — 13 


K 


146 


THE CAXTONS: 


once seen, and, after having got the army out of the 
hobble, leaving it to figlit or run away, as it had most 
mind to. Now I look upon that shepherd, or angel, as a 
very good type of my fortune at least. The apparition 
showed me my way in the rocks to the great “ Battle of 
Life;” after that — hold fast and strike hard. 

Behold me in London with Uncle Roland. My poor 
parents naturally wished to accompany me, and take the 
last glimpse of the adventurer on board ship ; but I, 
knowing that the parting would seem less dreadful to 
them by the hearth-stone, and while they could say, “ He 
is with Roland — he is not yet gone from the land” — 
insisted on their staying behind ; and thus the farewell 
was spoken. But Roland, the old soldier, had so many 
practical instructions to give — could so help me in the 
choice of the outfit, and the preparations for the voyage, 
that I could not refuse his companionship to the last. 
Guy Bolding, who had gone to take leave of his father, 
was to join me in town, as well as my humbler Cumber- 
land colleagues. 

As my uncle and I were both of one mind upon the 
question of economy, we took up our quarters at a lodging- 
house in the City; and there it was that I first made 
acquaintance with a part of London, of which few of my 
politer readers even pretend to be cognisant. I do not 
mean any sneer at the City itself, my dear alderman ; that 
jest is worn out. I am not alluding to streets, courts, 

and lanes ; what I mean may be seen at the West-end 

not so well as at the East, but still seen very fairly 1 1 
mean — the house-tops 1 


A FAMILY PIOTUBE 


147 


CHAPTER II. 

BEING A CHAPTER ON HOUSE-TOPS. 

The house-tops I what a soberising efifect that prospect 
produces on the mind I But a great many requisites gc 
towards the selection of the right point of survey. It is 
not enough to secure a lodging in the attic ; you must not 
be fobbed off with a front attic that faces the street. 
First, your attic must be unequivocally a back attic ; 
^condly, the house in which it is located must be slightly 
elevated above its neighbors ; thirdly, the window must 
not lie slant on the roof, as is common with attics — in 
which case, you only catch a peep of that leaden canopy 
which infatuated Londoners call the sky — but must be a 
window perpendicular, and not half blocked up by the 
parapets of that fosse called the gutter ; and, lastly, the 
sight must be so humored that you cannot catch a glimpse 
of the pavements : if you once see the world beneath, the 
whole charm of that world above is destroyed. Taking 
it for granted that you have secured these requisites, open 
your window, lean your chin on both hands, the elbows 
propped commodiously on the sill, and contemplate the 
extraordinary scene which spreads before you. You find 
it difficult to believe life can be so tranquil on high while 


148 


THE OAXTONS: 


3t is so noisy and turbulent below. What astonishing 
stillness I Eliot Warburton (seductive enchanter !) recom- 
mends you to sail down the Nile if you want to lull the 
vexed spirit. It is easier and cheaper to hire an attic in 
Holborn 1 You don’t have the crocodiles, but you have 
animals no less hallowed in Egypt — the cats I And how 
harmoniously the tr.anquil creatures blend with the pros- 
pect — how noiselessly they glide along at the distance, 
pause, peer about, and . disappear. It is only from the 
attic that you can appreciate the picturesque which belong 
to our domesticated tigerkin I The. goat should be seen 
on the Alps, and the cat . on the house-top. 

By degrees the curious eye takes the scenery in detail': 
and first, what fantastic variety in the heights and shapes 
of the chimney-pots I Some all level in a row, uniform 
and respectable, but quite uninteresting ; others, again, 
rising out of all proportion, and imperatively tasking the 
reason to conjecture , why they are so aspiring. Reason 
answers, that it is but a; homely expedient to give freer 
vent to the smoke ; wherewith Imagination steps in, and 
represents to you all the fretting, and fuming, and worry, 
and care, which the owners of that , chimney, now the 
tallest of all, endured, before, by building it higher, they 
got rid of the vapors. You see the distress of the cook, 
when the sooty invader rushed down, “ like a wolf on the 
fold,” full spring on the Sunday joint. You hear the 
exclamations of the mistress (perhaps a bride — house 
newly furnished) when, with white apron and cap, she 
ventured into the drawing-room, and was straightwaj 


A FAMILY PICTUKE. 


149 


saluted by a joyous dance of those monads, called vulgarly 
smuts. You feel manly indignation at the brute of a 
bridegroom, who rushes out from the door, with the smuts 
dancing after him, and swears, Smoked out again 1 By 
the Arch-smoker himself I I’ll go and dine at the club.” 
All this might well have been, till the chimney-pot was 
I aised a few feet nearer heaven ; and now perhaps that 
long-suffering family owns the happiest home in the Row. 
Such contrivances to get rid of the smoke I It is not 
every one who merely heightens his chimney ; others clap 
on the hollow tormentor all sorts of odd head-gear and 
cowls. Here, patent contrivances act the purpose of 
weathercocks, swaying to and fro with the wind ; there, 
others stand as fixed, as if, by a “szc Jwfteo,” they had 
settled the business. But of all those houses that, in the 
street, one passes by, unsuspicious of what’s the matter 
within, there is not one in a hundred but what there has 
been the devil to do, to cure the chimneys of smoking I 
At that reflection. Philosophy dismisses the subject ; and 
decides that, whether one lives in a hut or a palace, the 
first thing to do is to look to the hearth — and get rid of 
the vapors. 

Kew beauties demand us. What endless undulations 
in the various declivities and ascents ; here a slant, there 
a zig zag I With what majestic disdain yon roof rises up 
to the left 1 Doubtless a palace of Genii or Gin (which 
last is the proper Arabic word for those builders of halls 
out of nothing, employed by Aladdin). Seeing only the 
roof of that palace boldly breaking the sky-line — how 

13* 2i 


150 


THE CAXTONS; 


serene your coh<omplations 1 Perhaps a star twinkles 
over it, and you muse on soft eyes far away ; while below 
at the threshold. — No, phantoms I we see you not from 
our attic. Note yonder that precipitous fall — how ragged 
and jagged the roof-scene descends in a gorge. He who 
would travel on foot through the pass of that defile, of 
which we see but the picturesque summits, stops his nose, 
averts his eyes, guards his pockets, and hurries along 
through the squalor of the grim London lazzaroni. But, 
seen above, what a noble break in the sky-line I It would 
be sacrilege to exchange that fine gorge for the dead flat 
of dull roof-tops. Look here — how delightful I — that 
desolate house with no roof at all — gutted and skinned 
by the last London fire ! You can see the poor green- 
and- white paper still clinging to the walls, and the chasm 
that once was a cupboard, and the shadows gathering 
black on the aperture that once was a hearth I Seen 
below, how quickly you would cross over the way I That 
great crack forebodes an avalanche ; you hold your breath, 
not to bring it down on your head. But seen above, what 
a compassionate, inquisitive charm in the skeleton ruin 1 
How your fancy runs riot — repeopling the chambers, 
hearing the last cheerful good-night of that destined 
Pompeii — creeping on tiptoe with the mother, when she 
gi\es her farewell look to the baby. Now all is midnight 
and silence ; then the red, crawling serpent comes out. 
Lo ! his breath ; hark ! his hiss. Now, spire after spire 
he winds and he coils; now he soars up erect — crest 
superb, and forked tongue — the beautiful horror 1 Then 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


151 


the start from the sleep, and the doubtful awakiag, and 
the run here and there, and the mother’s rush to the 
cradle ; the cry from the window, and the knock at the 
door, and the spring of those on high towards the stair 
that leads to safety below, and the smoke rushing up like 
the surge of a hell I And they run back stifled and 
blinded, and the floor heaves beneath them like a bark 
on the sea. Hark 1 the grating wheels thundering low ; 
near and nearer comes the engine. ‘Fix the ladders 1 — 
there I there I at the window, where the mother stands 
with the babe I Splash and hiss comes the water ; pales, 
then flares out, the fire : foe defies foe ; element, element. 
How sublime is the war I But the ladder, the ladder I — 
there, at the window I All else are saved : the clerk and 
his books I the lawyer with that tin box of title-deeds ; 
the landlord, with his policy of insurance; the miser, 
with his bank-notes and gold : all are saved — all, but 
the babe and the mother. What a crowd in the streets I 
how the light crimsons over the gazers, hundreds on 
hundreds I All those faces seem as one face, with fear. 
Hot a man mounts the ladder. Yes, there — gallant 
fellow 1 God inspires — God shall speed thee I How 
plainly I see him 1 his eyes are closed, his teeth set. The 
serpent leaps up, the forked tongue darts upon him, and 
the reek of the breath wraps him round. The crowd has 
obbed back like a sea, and the smoke rushes over them 
all. Ha I what dim forms are those on the ladder ? Near 
and nearer — crash come the roof-tiles. Alas, and alas I 
-—no 1 a cry of joy — a “ Thank Heaven 1 ” and the women 


152 


THE CAXTONS: 


force their way through the men to come round the child 
and the mother. All is gone save that skeleton ruin. 
But the ruin is seen from above. 0 Art I study life from 
the roof-tops 1 


CHAPTER III. 

I WAS again foiled in seeing Trevanion. It was the 
Easter recess, and he was at the house of one of his 
brother ministers, somewhere in the north of England. 
But Lady Ellinor was in London, and I was ushered into 
her presence. Nothing could be more cordial than her 
manner, though she was evidently much depressed in 
spirits, and looked wan and care-worn. 

After the kindest inquiries relative to my parents and 
the Captain, she entered with much sympathy into my 
schemes and plans, which she said Trevanion had confided 
to her. The sterling kindness that belonged to my old 
patron (despite his affected anger at my not accepting 
his proffered loan), had not only saved me and my fellow- 
adventurer all trouble as to allotment orders, but procured 
advice as to choice of site and soil, from the best practical 
experience, which we found afterwards exceedingly useful. 
And as Lady Ellinor gave me the little packet of papers, 
with Trevanion’s shrewd notes on the margin, she said 
with a half sigh, “Albert bids me say that he wishes he 
were as sanguine of his success in the cabinet as of yours 
ill the Bush.” She then turned to her husband’s rise and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 153 

prospects, and her face began to change. Her eyes 
sparkled, the color came to her cheeks — “ But you are 
one of the few who know him,” she said, interrupting 
herself suddenly ; “ you know how he sacrifices all things 
— joy, leisure, health — to his country. There is not one 
belfish thought in his nature. And yet such envy — such 
obstacles still I and ” (her 'eyes dropped on her dress, and 
I perceived that she was in mourning, though the mourn- 
ing was not deep), “and,” she added, “it has pleased 
Heaven to withdraw from his side one who would have 
been worthy his alliance.” 

I felt for the proud woman, though her emotion seemed 
more that of pride than sorrow. And perhaps Lord 
Castleton’s highest merit in her eyes had been that of 
ministering to her husband’s power and her own ambition. 
I bowed my head in silence, and thought of Fanny. 
Did she, too, pine for the lost rank, or rather mourn the 
lost lover? 

After a time, I said hesitatingly, “ I scarcely presume 
to condole with you. Lady Ellinor I yet believe me, few 
things ever shocked me, like the death you allude to. I 
trust Miss Trevanion’s health has not much suffered. 
Shall I not see her before I leave England ? ” 

Lady Ellinor fixed her keen bright eyes searchingly on 
my countenance, and perhaps the gaze satisfied her, for 
she held out her hand to me with a frankness almost tender, 
and said — “Had I had a son, the dearest wish of my 
heart had been to see you wedded to my daughter.” 

I started up — the blood rushed to my cheeks, and then 


154 


THE CAXTONS; 


left me pale as death. I looked reproachfully at Lady 
Elliuor, and the word “ cruel 1 ” faltered on my lips. 

“Yes,” continued Lady Ellinor, mournfully, “that was 
my real thought, my impulse of regret, when I first saw 
you. But, as it is, do not think me too hard and worldly, 
if I quote the lofty old French proverb. Noblesse oblige. 
Listen to me, my young friend — we may never meet 
again, and I would not have your father’s son think 
unkindly of me, with all my faults. From my first child- 
hood I was ambitious — not as women usually are, of mere 
wealth and rank — but ambitious as noble men are, of 
power and fame. A woman can only indulge such 
ambition by investing it in another. It was not wealth, 
it was not rank, that attracted me to Albert Trevanion : 
it was the nature that dispenses with the wealth, and 
commands the rank. “Nay,” continued Lady Ellinor, 
in a voice that slightly trembled, “ I may have seen in my 
youth, before I knew Trevanion, one (she paused a 
moment, and went on hurriedly) — one who wanted but 
ambition to have realised my ideal. Perhaps, even when 
I married — and it was said for love — I loved less with 
my whole heart than with my whole mind. I may say 
this now, for now every beat of this pulse is wholly and 
only true to him with whom I have schemed, and toiled, 
and aspired ; with whom I have grown as one ; with whom 
I have shared the struggle, and now partake the triumph, 
realising the visions of my youth.” 

Again the light broke from the dark eyes of this grand 
daughter of the world, who was so superb a type of that 
moral contradiction — an ambitious woman. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


155 


“ I cannot tell you,” resumed Lady Ellinor, softening, 
** how pleased I was when you came to live with us. Your 
father has perhaps spoken to you of me, and of our first 
acquaintance I ” 

Lady Ellinor paused abruptly, and surveyed me as she 
paused. I was silent. 

“ Perhaps, too, he has blamed me ? ” she resumed, with 
a heightened color. 

He never blamed you. Lady Ellinor I ” 

He had a right to do so — though I doubt if he would 
have blamed me on the true ground. Yet no ; he never 
could have done me the wrong that your uncle did, when, 
long years ago, Mr. He Caxton in a letter — the very 
bitterness of which disarmed all anger — accused me of 
having trifled with Austin — nay, with himself I And he, 
at least, had no right to reproach me,” continued Lady 
Ellinor, warmly, and with a curve of her haughty lip ; 
“ for if I felt interest in his wild thirst for some romantic 
glory, it was but in the hope that, what made the one 
brother so restless might at least wake the other to the 
ambition that would have become his intellect, and aroused 
his energies. But these are old tales of follies and 
delusions now no more ; only this will I say, that I have 
ever felt, in thinking of your father, and even of your 
sterner uncle, as if my conscience reminded me of a debt 
which I longed to discharge — if not to them, to their 
children. So, when we knew you, believe me, that your 
interests, youi career, instantly became to me an object. 

But mistaking you — when I saw your ardent industry 


156 


THE CAXTONS: 


bent on serious Objects, and accompanied by a mind so 
fresli and buoyant ; and absorbed as I was in schemes or 
projects far beyond a woman’s ordinary province of hearth 
and home — I never dreamed, while you were our guest — 
never dreamed of danger to you or Fanny. I wound 
you — pardon me ; but I must vindicate myself. I repeat 
that, if we had a son to inherit our name, to bear the 
burthen which the world lays upon those who are born to 
influence the world’s destinies, there is no one to whom 
Trevanion and myself would sooner have entrusted the 
happiness of a daughter. But my daughter is the sole 
representative of the mother’s line, of the father’s name : 
it is not her happiness alone that I have to consult, it is 
her duty — duty to her birthright, to the career of the 
noblest of England’s patriots — duty, I may say, without 
exaggeration, to the country for the sake of which that 
career is run I ” 

Say no more. Lady Ellinor ; say no more. I under 
stand you. I have no hope — I never had hope — it was 
a madness — it is over. It is but as a friend that I ask 
again, if I may see Miss Trevanion in your presence, 
before — before I go alone into this long exile, to leave, 
perhaps, my dust in a stranger’s soil 1 Ay, look in my 
face — you cannot fear my resolution, my honor, my truth. 
But once. Lady Ellinor — but once more. Do I ask in 
vain ? ” 

Lady Ellinor was e-vidently much moved. T bent down 
almost in the attitude of kneeling ; and, brushing awav 
her tears with one hand, she laid the other on my head 
tenderly, and said in a very low voice — 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


157 


** I entreat you not to ask me ; I entreat you n ot to 
see my daughter. You have shown that you are not 
selfish — conquer yourself still. What if such an inter- 
view, however guarded you might be, were but to agitate, 
unnerve my child, unsettle her peace, prey upon — ” 

“ Oh, do not speak thus — she did not share my feelings I 

“ Could her mother own it if she did ? Come, come, 
remember how young you both are. When you return, 
all these dreams will be forgotten ; then we can meet as 
before — then I will be your second mother, and again 
your career shall be my care ; for do not think that we 
shall leave you so long in this exile as you seem to for- 
bode. No, no; it is but an absence — an excursion — 
not a search after fortune. Your fortune — leave that to 
us when you return I ” 

“And I am to see her no more ! ” I murmured as I 
rose, and went silently towards the window to conceal my 
face. The great struggles in life are limited momentu 
In the drooping of the head upon the bosom — in thw 
pressure of the hand upon the brow — we may scarcely 
consume a second in our three-score years and ten ; but 
what revolutions of our whole being may pass within us, 
while that single sand drops noiseless down to the bottom 
of the hour-glassi 

I came back with firm step to Lady Ellinor, and said 
calmly, “ My reason tells me that you are right, and I 
submit. Forgive me ! and do not think me ungrateful 
and over-proud, if I add, that you must leave me still the 
object in life that consoles and encourages me through all.” 

IL~ 14 


158 


THE C A X T 0 N S : 


“What object is that?” asked Lady Ellinor, hesit» 
tiiigly. 

“ Independence for myself, and ease to those for whom 
life is still sweet. This is my twofold object ; and the 
means to effect it must be my own heart and my own 
hands. And now convey all my thanks to your noble 
husband, and accept my warm prayers for yourself and 
her — whom I will not name. Farewell, Lady Ellinor.” 

“ No, do not leave me so hastily; I have many things 
to discuss with you — at least to ask of you. Tell me 
how your father bears his reverse ? — tell me, at least, if 
there be aught he will suffer us to do for him ? There 
are many appointments in Trevanion’s range of influence 
that would suit even the wilful indolence of a man of 
letters. Come, be frank with me ! ” 

I could not resist so much kindness ; so I sat dowui, 
and, as collectedly as I could, replied to Lady Ellinor’s 
questions, and sought to convince her that my father only 
felt his losses so far as they affected me, and that nothing 
in Trevanion’s power was likely to tempt him from his 
retreat, or calculated to compensate for a change in his 
habits. Turning at last from my parents. Lady Ellinor 
inquired for Roland, and, on learning that he was with 
me in town, expressed a strong desire to see him. 1 told 
her 1 would communicate her wish, apd she then said, 
thoughtfully — 

“ He has a son, I think, and I have heard that there is 
some unhappy dissension between them.” 

“ Who could have told you that ? ” I asked, in surprise. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


159 


knowing how closely Roland had kept the secret of his 
family afflictions. 

Oh, I heard so from some one who knew Captain 
Roland — I forget when and where I heard it — but is it 
not the fact?’^ 

“ My Uncle Roland- has no son.^^ 

“ How 1” 

“His son is dead.” 

“ How such a loss must grieve him I ” 

I did not speak. 

“ But is he sure that his son is dead ? What joy if he 
were mistaken — if the son yet lived I ” 

“ Nay, my uncle has a brave heart, and he is resigned ; 
but, pardon me, have you heard anything of that son ? ” 

“ 1 1 — what should I hear ? I would fain learn, how- 
ever, from your uncle himself, what he might like to tell 
me of his sorrows — or if, indeed, there be any chance 
that ” 

“ That — what ? ” 

“That — that his son still survives.” 

“ I think not,” said I ; “ and I doubt whether you will 
learn much from my uncle. Still there is something in 
your words that belies their apparent meaning, and makes 
me suspect that you know more than you will say.” 

“Diplomatist!” said Lady Ellinor, half smiling; bui 
tlien„her face settling into a seriousness almost severe, 
she added — “It is terrible to think that a father should 
bate his son I ” 

‘ II ate I — Roland hate his son I What calumny is this ? ” 


160 


THE CAXTONS; 


** He does not do so, then I Assure me of that ; I shall 
be so glad to know that I have been misinformed. ” 

** I can tell you this, and no more — for no more do I 
know — that if ever the soul of a father were wrapt up 
in a son — fear, hope, gladness, sorrow, all reflected back 
on a father’s heart from the shadows on a son’s life — 
Roland was that father while the son lived still.” 

“ I cannot disbelieve you I ” exclaimed Lady Ellinor, 
though in a tone of surprise. “Well, do let me see your 
uncle.” 

“I will do my best to induce him to visit you, and 
learn all that you evidently conceal from me.” 

Lady Ellinor evasively replied to this insinuation, and 
shortly afterwards I left that house in which I had known 
the happiness that brings the folly, and the grief that 
bequeaths the wisdom. 


CHAPTER lY. 

I HAD always felt a warm and almost filial affection 
for Lady Ellinor, independently of her relationship to 
Fanny, and of the gratitude with which her kindness 
inspired me ; for there is an affection very peculiar in its 
nature, and very high in its degree, which results from 

the blending of two sentiments not often allied, viz., 

pity and admiration. It was impossible not to admire 
the rare gifts and great qualities of Lady Ellinor, and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


I6l 


not to feel pity for the cares, anxieties, and sorrows 
which tormented one who, with all the sensitiveness of 
woman, went forth into the rough world of man. 

My father’s confession had somewhat impaired my 
esteem for Lady Ellinor, and had left on my mind the 
uneasy impression that she had trifled with his deep and 
Roland’s impetuous heart. The conversation that had 
just passed allowed me to judge her with more justice — > 
allowed me to see that she had really shared the affection 
she had inspired in the student, but that ambition had been 
stronger than love — an ambition, it might be, irregular, 
and not strictly feminine, but still of no vulgar nor sordid 
kind. I gathered, too, from her hints and allusions, her 
true excuse for Roland’s misconception of her apparent 
interest in himself : she had but seen, in the wild energies 
of the elder brother, some agency by which to arouse the 
serener faculties of the younger. She had but sought, in 
the strange comet that flashed before her, to fix a lever 
that might move the star. Nor could I withhold my 
reverence from the woman who, not being married pre- 
cisely for love, had no sooner linked her nature to one 
worthy of it, than her whole life became as fondly devoted 
to her husband’s as if he had been the object of her first 
romance and her earliest affections. If even her child 
w>is so secondary to her husband — if the fate of that 
child was but regarded by her as one to be rendered sub- 
servient to the grand destinies of Trevanion — still it was 
impossible to recognise the ep-or of that conjugal devotion 
jirithout admiring the wife, though one might condemn 
14* L 


162 


THE CAXTONS: 


the mother. Turning from these meditations, I felt a 
lover’s thrill of selfish joy, amidst all the mournful sorrow 
comprised in the thought that I should see Fanny no more. 
Was it true, as Lady Ellinor implied, though delicately, 
that Fanny still cherished a remembrance of me — which 
a briei interview, a last farewell, might reawaken too 
dangerously for her peace? Well, that was a thought 
that it became me not to indulge. 

What could Lady Ellinor have heard of Roland and 
his son ? Was it possible that the lost lived still ? Asking 
myself these questions, I arrived at our lodgings, and saw 
the Captain himself before me, busied with the inspection 
of sundry specimens of the rude necessaries an Australian 
adventurer requires. There stood the old soldier, by the 
window, examining narrowly into the temper of hand-saw 
and tenon-saw, broad-axe and drawing-knife ; and as I 
came up to him, he looked at me from under his black 
brows, with gruff compassion, and said peevishly — 

“ Fine weapons these for the son of a gentleman 1 — 
one bit of steel in the shape of a sword were worth them 
all.” 

“ Any weapon that conquers fate is noble in the hands 
of a brave man, uncle ” 

“The boy has an answer for everything,” quoth the 
Captain, smiling, as he took out his purse and paid the 
shopman. 

When we were alone, I said to him — “Uncle, you 
must go and see Lady Ellinor ; she desires me to tell you 
so ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


163 


“ Pshaw I ” 

‘‘You will not?” 

“ Nol” 

“Uncle, I think that she has something to say to you 
with regard to — to — pardon me ! — to my cousin.” 

“ To Blanche ? ” 

“No, no — the cousin I never saw.” Roland turned 
])ale, and sinking down on a chair, faltered out — “To 
him — to my son ? ” 

“ Yes ; but I do not think it is news that will afflict 
you. Uncle, are you sure that my cousin is dead ? ” 

“ What I — how dare you ! — who doubts it ? Dead — 
•dead to me for ever I Boy, would you have him live to 
dishonor these grey hairs ? ” 

“ Sir, sir, forgive me — uncle, forgive me : but, pray, go 
to see Lady Ellinor ; for whatever she has to say, I re- 
peat that I am sure it will be nothing to wbund you.” 

“ Nothing to wound me — yet relate to him! ” 

It is impossible to convey to the reader the despair 
that was in those words. 

“ Perhaps,” said I, after a long pause, and in a low 
voice — for I was awe-stricken — “perhaps — if he be 
dead — he may have repented of all offence to you before 
he died.” 

“ Repented — ha, ha I ” 

“ Or, if he be not dead ” 

“ Hush, boy — hush I ” 

“While there is life, there is hope of repentance.” 

‘^Look you, nephew,” said the Captain, rising and 


164 


THE OAXTONS: 


folding his arms resolutely on his breast — “look you, 1 
desired that that name might never be breathed. I have 
not cursed my son yet ; could he come to life — the curse 
might fall i You do not know what torture your words 
have given me, just when I had opened my heart to 
n n other son, and found that son in you. With respect to 
the lost, I have now but one prayer — and you know it — 
the heartbroken prayer — that his name never more may 
come to my ears I ” 

As he closed these words, to which I ventured no reply, 
the Captain ' took long, disordered strides across the 
room : and suddenly, as if the space imprisoned, or the 
air stifled him, he seized his hat, and hastened into the, 
streets. Recovering my surprise and dismay, I ran after 
him ; but he commanded me to leave him to his own 
thoughts, in a voice so stern, yet so sad, that I had no 
choice but to obey. I knew, by my own experience, how 
necessary is solitude in the moments when grief is strong- 
est and thought most troubled 


CHAPTER V. 

Hours elapsed, and the Captain had not returned 
home. I began to feel uneasy, and went forth in search 
of him, though I knew not whither to direct my steps. 
T thought it, however, at least probable that he had not 
been able to resist visiting Lady Ellinor; so I went first 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


166 


to St. James’s Square. My suspicions were correct; the 
Captain had been there two hours before. Lady Ellinor 
herself had gone out shortly after the Captain left 
While the porter was giving me this information, a 
carriage stopped at the door, and a footman, stepping 
up, gave the porter a note and a small parcel, seemingly 
of books, saying simply, “ From the Marquis of Castle- 
ton.” At the sound of that name I turned hastily, and 
recognised Sir Sedley Beaudesert seated in the carriage, 
and looking out of the window with a dejected, moody 
expression of countenance, very different from his ordinary 
aspect, except when the rare sight of a grey hair or a 
twinge of the tooth-ache reminded him that he was no 
longer twenty-five. Indeed, the change was so great 
that I exclaimed, dubiously — “Is that Sir Sedley Beau- 
desert ? ” The footman looked at me, and touching his 
hat said, with a condescending smile, — “Yes, sir — now 
the Marquis of Castleton.” 

Then, for the first time since the young lord’s death, I 
remembered Sir Sedley’s expressions of gratitude to Lady 
Castleton, and the waters of Ems, for having saved him 
from “that horrible marquisate.” Meanwhile, my old 
friend had perceived me, exclaiming, — 

“ What ! Mr. Caxton I I am delighted to see you 
Open the door, Thomas. Pray come in, come in.” 

I obeyed ; and the new Lord Castleton made room for 
me by his side. 

“Are you in a hurry?” said he; “if so, shall I take 
you anywhere? — if not, give me half an hour of your 

time, while I drive to the City ” 

2k 


166 


THE CAXTONS: 


As I knew not now in what direction, more than 
another, to prosecute my search for the captain, and as 1 
thought I might as well call at our lodging to inquire if 
he had not returned, I answered that I should be very 
happy to accompany his lordship; ‘‘though the City,” 
said I, smiling, “ sounds to me strange upon the lips of 
Sir Sedley — I beg pardon, I should say of Lord ” 

“ Don’t say any such thing ; let me once more, hear the 
grateful sound of Sedley Beaudesert. Shut the door; 
Thomas; to Grace-church Street — Messrs. Fudge and 
Fidget.” 

The carriage drove on. 

“A sad affliction has befallen, me,” said the marquis, 
“ and none sympathise with me I ” 

“Yet all, even unacqufiinted with the late lord,. must 
have felt shocked at the death of one so . young, and so 
full of promise.” 

“ So fitted in every way to bear the burden of the great 
Castleton name and property — and yet you see it killed 
him I — Ah I if he had been but a simple gentleman, or if 
he had a less conscientious desire to do his duties, he 
would have lived to a good old age. I know what it is 
already. Oh, if you saw the piles of letters on my table I 
I positively dread the post. Such colossal improvement 
on the property which the, poor boy had begun, for me to 
finish. What do you think takes me to Fudge and 
Fidget’s ? Sir, they are the agents for an infernal coal- 
mine which my cousin had reopened in Durham, to plague 
my life out with another thirty thousand pounds a-yearl 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 167 

How am I to spend the money ? — how am I to spend it ? 
There’s a cold-blooded head steward, who says that 
charity is the greatest crime a man in high station can 
commit ; it demoralises the poor. Then, because some 
half-a-dozen farmers sent me a round-robin, to the effect 
that their' rents were too high, and I wrote them word 
that the rents should be lowered, there was such a hulla- 
baloo — you would have thought heaven and earth were 
Coming together. ‘If a man in the position of the 
Marquis of Castleton set the example of letting land 
below its value, how could the poorer squires in the 
country exist ? — or if they did exist, what injustice to 
expose them to the charge that they were grasping land- 
lords, vampires, and bloodsuckers I Clearly if Lord 
Castleton lowered his rents (they were too low already), 
he struck a mortal blow at the property of his neighbors, 
if they followed his example : or at their characters if 
they did not.’ I^o^ man can tell how hard it is to do 
good, unless fortune gives him a hundred thousand a-year, 
and says, — ‘ Now, do good with it I ’ Sedley Beaudesert 
might follow his whims, and all that would be said 
against him was, ‘ good-natured, simple fellow I ’ But if 
Lord Castleton follow his whims, you would think he 
was a second Catiline — unsettling the peace, and under- 
mining the prosperity, of the entire nation I ” Here the 
wretched man paused, and sighed heavily ; then, as his 
thoughts wandered into a new channel of woe, he re- 
sumed, — “ Ah I if you could but see the forlorn great 
house I am exj>ected to inhabit, cooped up between dead 


168 


THE CAXTONS: 


walls, instead of my pretty rooms, with the windows full 
on the park ; ^nd the balls I am expected to give, and 
the parliamentary interest I am to keep up : and the 
villanous proposal made to me to become a lord-steward 
or lord-chamberlain, because it suits my rank to be a sort 
of a servant. Oh, Pisistratus I you lucky dog — not 
twenty-one, and with, I dare say, not two hundred pounds 
a-year in the world I 

Thus bemoaning and bewailing his sad fortunes, the 
poor marquis ran on, till at last he exclaimed, in a tone 
of yet deeper despair, — 

“And everybody says I must marry, too I — that the 
Castleton line must not be extinct I The Beaudeserts 
are a good family eno’ — as old, for what I know, as the 
Castletons ; but the British empire would suffer no loss 
if they sank into the tomb of the Capulets. But that the 
Castleton peerage should expire, is a thought of crime 
and woe, at which all the mothers of England rise in a 
phalanx I And so, instead of visiting the sins of the 
fathers on the sons, it is the father that is to be sacrificed 
for the benefit of the third and fourth generation I ’’ 

Despite my causes for seriousness, I could not help 
laughing ; my companion turned on me a look of reproach. 

“At least,” said I, composing my countenance, “Lord 
Castleton has one comfort in his afflictions — if he must 
marry, he may choose as he pleases.” 

“ That is precisely what Sedley Beaudesert could, and 
fjord Castleton cannot do,” said the marquis gravely. 
“ The rank of Sir Sedley Beaudesert was a quiet and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


165 


comfortable rank^ — he might marry a curate’s daughter, 
or a duke’s — and please his eye or grieve his heart as 
the caprice took him. But Lord Castleton must marry, 
oot for a wife, but for a marchioness, — marry some one 
Yho will wear his ra.nk for him, — take the trouble of 
splendor off his hands, and allow him to retire into a 
corner, and dream that he is Sedley Beaudesert once more I 
Yes, it must be so — the crowning sacrifice must be 
completed at the altar. But a truce to my complaints. 
Trevanion informs me you are going to Australia, — can 
that be true ? ” 

“Perfectly true.” 

“They say there is a sad want of ladies there.” 

“ So much the better, — I shall be all the more steady.” 

“ Well, tliere’s something in that. Have you seen Lady 
Ellinor?” 

“Yes — this morning.” 

“ Poor woman I — a great blow to her — we have tried 
to console each other. Fanny, you know, is staying at 
Oxton, in Surrey, with Lady Castleton — the poor lady 
is so fond of her — and no one has comforted her like 
Fanny.” 

“I was not aware that Miss Trevanion was out of 
town.” 

“ Only for a few days, and then she and Lady Ellinor 
join Trevanion in the north — you know he is with Lord 
N , settling measures on which — but alas I they con- 

sult me now on those matters — force their secrets on me. 
I have. Heaven knows how many votes I Poor me ! 
IT. — 15 


no 


THE CAXTONS: 


Upon my word, if Lady Ellinor was a widow, I should 
certainly make up to her ; very clever woman, nothing 
bores her ” (The marquis yawned — Sir Sedley Beau- 
desert never yawned.) “ Trevanion has provided for his 
Scotch secretary, and is about to get a place in the 
Foreign Office for that young fellow Gower, whom, be- 
tween you and me, I don’t like. But he has bewitched 
Trevanion 1 ” 

“What sort of a person is this Mr. Gower? — I re- 
member you said that he was clever, and good-looking. ” 

“ He is both, but it is not the cleverness of youth ; he 
is as hard and sarcastic as if he had been cheated fifty 
times, and jilted a hundred ! Neither are his good looks 
that letter of recommendation which a handsome face is 
said to be. He- has an expression of countenance very 
much like that of Lord Hertford’s pet blood-hound, when 
a stranger comes into the room. Very sleek, handsome 
dog, the blood-hound is certainly — well-mannered, and I 
dare say exceedingly tame ; but still you have but to look 
at the comer of the eye, to know that it is only the habit' 
of the drawing-room that suppresses the creature’s con- 
stitutional tendency to seize you by the throat, instead of 
giving you a paw. Still this Mr. Gower has a very 
striking head — something about it Moorish or Spanish, 
like a picture by Murillo : I half suspect that he is less a 
Gower than a gipsy I ” 

“ What i” — I cried, as I listened with rapt and breath • 
less attention to this description. “ He is then very dark, 
With high narrow forehead, features slightly aquiline, but 


A FAMILY PICTURE. HI 

very delicate, and teeth so dazzling that the whole face 
seems to sparkle when he smiles though it is only the 
lip that smiles, not the eye.’^ 

“ Exactly as you say ; you have seen him, then ? 

^‘Why, I am not sure, since you say his name is 
Gower.” 

“ Se says his name is Gower,’'* returned Lord Castleton, 
dryly, as he inhaled the Beaudesert mixture. 

“ And where is he now ? — with Mr. Trevanion ? 

^‘Yes, I believe so. Ah 1 here we are — Fudge and 
Fidget 1 But, perhaps,” added Lord Castleton, with a 
gleam of hcipe in his blue eye — “ perhaps they are not 
at home 1 ” 

Alas I that was an illusive “ imagining,” as the poets 
of the nineteenth century unaffectedly express themselves^ 
Messrs. Fudge and Fidget were never out. to such clients 
as the Marquis of Castleton : with a deep sighj and an 
altered expression of face, the Yictim of Fortune slowly 
descended the steps of the carriage. 

“I can’t ask you to wait for me,” said he: ^‘Heaven 
only knows how long I shall be kept 1 Take the carriage 
where you will, and send it back to me.” 

“A thousand thanks, my dear lord, I would rather 
walk — but you will let me call on you before I leave 
town.” 

“ Let you I — I insist on it. I am still at the old 
quarters — under pretence,” said the marquis, with a sly 
twinkle of the eyelid, “ that Castleton House wants 
painting! 


172 


THE CAXTONS: 


At twelve to-morrow, then ? ” 

“ Twelve to-morrow. Alas I that’s just the hour at 
which Mr. Screw, the agent for the London property 
(two squares, seven streets, and a lane !) is to call.” 

“ Perhaps two o’clock will suit you better ? ” 

“ Two I just the hour at which Mr. Plausible, one of 
the Castleton members, insists upon telling me why his 
conscience will not let him vote with Trevanion 1 ” 

“ Three o’clock ? ” 

“Three I— just the hour at which I am to ^jee th« 
secretary of the Treasury, who has promised to relieve 
Mr. Plausible’s conscience I But come and dine with me 
— you will meet the executors to the will I ” 

“ Nay, Sir Sedley — that is, my dear lord — I will take 
my chance, and look in after dinner.” 

“ Do so ; my guests are not lively I What a firm step 
the rogue has I Only twenty I think — twenty ! and not 
an acre of property to plague him I ” So saying, the 
marquis dolorously shook his head, and vanished through 
the noiseless mahogany doors, behind which Messrs. 
Fudge and Fidget awaited the unhappy man, — with the 
accounts of the Great Castleton coal-mine. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


113 


CHAPTER VI. 

On my way towards our lodgings, I resolved to look in 
at an humble tavern, in the coffee-room of which the 
Captain and myself habitually dined. It was now about 
the usual hour in which we took that meal, and he might 
be there waiting for me. I had just gained the steps of 
this tavern, when a stage-coach came rattling along the 
pavement, and drew up at an inn of more pretension;’ 
than that which we favored, situated within a few doors 
of the latter. As the coach stopped, my eye was caught 
by the Trevanion livery, which was very peculiar. Think- 
ing I must be deceived, I drew near to the wearer of the 
livery, who had just descended from the roof, and while 
he paid the coachman, gave his orders to a waiter who 
emerged from the inn — “ Half-and-half, cold without I ” 
The tone of the voice struck me as familiar, and the man 
now looking up, I beheld the features of Mr. Peacock. 
Yes, unquestionably it was he. The whiskers were shaved 

there were traces of powder in the hair or the wig — 

the livery of the Trevanions (ay, the very livery — crest- 
button and all) upon that portly figure, which I had last 
seen in the more august robes of a beadle. But Mr. 
Peacock it was — Peacock travestied, but Peacock still. 
Before I had recovered my amaze, a woman got out of a 
15 * 


174 


THE CAXTONS: 


cabriolet, that seemed to have been in waiting for the 
arrival of the coach, and, hurrying up to Mr. Peacock, 
said in the loud impatient tone common to the fairest of 
the fair sex, when in haste — “ How late you are ! — I was 
just going. I must get back to Oxton to-night.” 

Oxton — Miss Trevanion was staying at Oxton I I 
was now close behind the pair — ^ I listened with my heart 
in my ear. 

“ So you shall, my dear ^ — so you shall ; just come in, 
will you.” 

“ No, no ; I have only ten minutes to catch the coach. 
Have you any letter for me from Mr. Gower? How 
can I be sure, if I don’t see it under his own hand, 
that — — ” 

“ Hush ! ” said Peacock, sinking his voice so low that 
I could only catch the words, “no names — letter, pooh. 
I’ll tell you.” He then drew her apart, and whisiiered 
to her for some moments. I watched the woman’s face, 
which was bent towards her companion’s, and it seemed 
to show quick intelligence. She nodded her head more 
than once, as if in impatient assent to what was said ; and, 
after a shaking of hands, hurried off to the cab ; then, as 
if a thought struck her, she ran back, and said — 

“ But in case my lady should not go — if there’s any 
change of plan.” 

“ There’ll be no change, you may be sure — positively 
to-morrow — not too early: you understand?” 

“Yes, yes; good-by” — and the woman, who was 
dressed with a quiet neatness, that seemed to stamp her 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


Lib 


profession as that of an abigail (black cloak with long 
cape — of that peculiar silk which seems spun on purpose 
for ladies’-maids — bonnet to match, \ 7 ith red and black 
ribbons), hastened once more away, and in another moment 
the cab drove off furiously. 

What could all this mean ? By this time the waiter 
brought Mr. Peacock the half-and-half. He despatched 
it hastily, and then strode on towards a neighboring stand 
of cabriolets. I followed him ; and just as, after beckon- 
ing one of the vehicles from the stand, he had ensconced 
himself therein, I sprang up the steps and placed myself 
by his side. “Now, Mr. Peacock,” said I, “you will tell 
me at once how you come to wear that livery, or I shall 
order the cabman to drive to Lady EUinor Trevanion’s, 
and ask her that question myself.” 

“And who the devil I — Ah, you’re the young gentleman 
that came to me behind the scenes — I remember.” 

“ Where to, sir ? ” asked the cabman. 

“To — to London Bridge,” said Mr. Peacock. 

The man mounted the box, and drove on. 

“Well, Mr. Peacock, I wait your answer. I guess by 
your face that you are about to tell me a lie ; T advise 
you to speak the truth.” 

“ I don’t know what business you have to question me,” 
said Mr. Peacock, sullenly ; and raising his glance from 
his own clenched fists, he suffered it to wander over my 
form with so vindictive a significance, that I interrupted 
the survey by saying, “ ‘ Will you encounter the house ? ’ 
as the Swan interrogatively puts it — shall 1 order thf 
cabman to drive to St. James’s Square?” 


n6 


THE CAXTONS’ 


“ Oh, you know my weak point, sir ? any man who can 
quote Will — sweet Will — has me on the hip,” rejoined 
Mr. Peacock, smoothing his countenance, and spreading 
his palms on his knees. “But if a man does fall in the 
world, and, after keeping servants of his own, is obliged 
to be himself a servant, 

‘I will not shame 

To tell you what I am.’” 

“ The Swan says, ‘ To tell you what I was,"^ Mi Pea* 
cock. But enough of this trifling ; who placed you with 
Mr. Trevanion ? ” 

Mr. Peacock looked down for a moment, and then 
fixing his eyes on me, said — “Well, Ifll tell you; yoi 
asked me, when we met last, about a young gentleman— 
Mr. — Mr. Vivian.” 

PisiSTRATUs. — Proceed. 

Peacock. — I know you don’t want to harm him 
Besides, “ He hath a prosperous art,” and one day or 
other — mark my words, or rather my friend Will’s — 

“ He will bestride this narrow world 
Like a Colossus.” 

Upon my life he will — like a Colossus, 

“And we petty men — ” 

PisiSTRATUS (savagely). — Go on with your story. 

Peacock (snappishly). — I am going on with it I You 
put me out ; where was I— oh— ah— yes. . I had just been 
sold up — not a penny in my pocket; and if you could 
have seen my coat — yet that was better than the small. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


nt 

clothes 1 Well, it was in Oxford Street — no, it was in 
the Strand, near the Lowther — 

“ The sun was in the heavens and the proud day 
Attended with the pleasures of the world.” 

PisiSTRATUS (lowering the glass). — To St. James’s 
Square ? 

Peacock. — No, no j to London Bridge. 

“ How use doth breed a habit in a man !” 

I will go on — honor bright. So I met Mr. Yivian, and 
as he had known me in better days, and has a good heart 
of his own, he says — 

“ Horatio, — or I do forget myself.” 

Pisistratus puts his hand on the check-string. 

Peacock (correcting himself). — I mean — Why, John- 
son, my good fellow. 

Pisistratus. — Johnson I — oh, that^s your name — not 
Peacock. 

Peacock. — Johnson and Peacock both (with dignity). 
When you know the world as I do, sir, you will find that 
it is ill travelling this “ naughty world” without a change 
of names in your portmanteau. 

Johnson,” says he, “my good fellow,” and he pulled 
ont his purse. “ Sir,” said I, “ if, ‘ exempt from public 
haunt,’ I could get something to do when this dross is 
gone. In London there are sermons in stones, certainly, 
but not ‘good in everything,’ an observation I should 
take the liberty of making to the Swan, if he were not 
alas I ‘ the baseless fabric of a vision. ’ ” 

M 


THE CAXTONS: 


ns 

PisiSTRATUS. — Take care I 

Peacock (hurriedly). — Then says Mr.Yivian, “If you 
don’t mind wearing a livery, till I can provide for you 
more suitably, my old friend, there’s a vacancy in the 
establishment of Mr. Trevanion.” Sir, I accepted the 
proposal, and that’s why I wear this livery. 

PisiSTRATUS. — And pray, what business had you with 
that young woman, whom I take to be Miss Trevanion’s 
maid ? and why should she come from Oxton to see you ? 

I had expected that these questions would confound 
Mr. Peacock ; but if there really were anything in them 
to cause embarrassment, the ci-devant actor was too 
practised in his profession to exhibit it. He merely 
smiled, and, smoothing jauntily a very tumbled shii;t-front, 
he said, “ Oh, sir, fie I 

‘Of this matter 

Is little Cupid^s crafty arrow made.’ 

If you must know my love affairs, that young woman is, 
as the vulgar say, my sweetheart.” 

Your sweetheart ? ” I exclaimed, greatly relieved, and 
acknowledging at once the probability of the statement. 
“Yet,” I added suspiciously — “yet, if so, why should 
she expect Mr. Gower to write to her ? ” 

“You’re quick of hearing, sir; but though 

‘All adoration, duty, and observance: 

All humbleness, and patience, and impatience,’ 

the young woman won’t marry a livery servant — proud 
creature ! — very proud ! and Mr. Gower, you see, know* 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


179 


ing how it was, felt for me, and told her, if I may take 
such liberty with the Swan, that she should 

‘Never lie by Johnson’s side 

With an unquiet soul,’ 

for that he would get me a place in the Stamps I The 
silly girl said she would have it in black and white — as 
if Mr. Gower would write to her I 

“ And now, sir,” continued Mr. Peacock, with a simpler 
gravity, “ you are at liberty, of course, to say what you 
please to my lady, but I hope you’ll not try to take the 
bread out of my mouth because I wear a livery, and am 
fool enough to be in love with a waiting- woman — I, sir, 
who could have married ladies who have played the first 
parts in life — on the metropolitan stage.” 

I had nothing to say to these representations — they 
seemed plausible ; and though at first I had suspected 
that the man had only resorted to the buffoonery of his 
quotations in order to gain time for invention, or to divert 
my notice from any flaw in his narrative, yet at the close, 
as the narrative seemed probable, so I was willing to 
believe the buffoonery was merely characteristic. I con- 
tented myself, therefore, with asking — 

“ Where do you come from now ? ” 

“ From Mr. Trevanion, in the country, with letters to 
Lady Ellinor.” 

Oh I and so the young woman knew yon were coming 
to town ? ” 

“ Yes, sir; Mr. Trevanion told me, some days ago, the 
day I should have to start. 


180 


THE C AXTONS : 


“And what do you and the young woman propose 
doing to-morrow, if there is no change of plan ? ” 

Here I certainly thought there was a slight, scarce 
perceptible, alteration in Mr. Peacock’s countenance ; but 
he answered readily, “ To-morrow, a little assignation, if 
we can both get out — 

Woo me, now I am in a holiday humor, 

And like enough to consent.* 

Swan again, sir.” 

“ Humph r — so then Mr. Gower and Mr. Vivian are 
the same person?” 

Peacock hesitated. “ That’s not my secret sir ; ‘I am 
combined by a sacred vow.’ You are too much the 
gentleman to peep through the blanket of the dark, and 
to ask me, who wear the whips and stripes — I mean tlie 
plush small-clothes and shoulderknots — the secrets of 
another gent, to ‘whom my services are bound.’ ” 

How a man past thirty foils a man scarcely twenty ! — 
what superiority the mere fact of living-on gives to the 
dullest dog I I bit my lip, and was silent. 

“And,” pursued Mr. Peacock, “ if you knew how the 
Mr. Vivian you inquired after loves you ! When I told 
him incidentally, how a young gentleman had come behind 
the scenes to inquire after him, he made me describe you, 
and then said, quite mournfully, ‘ If ever I am what I hope 
to become, how happy I shall be to shake that kind hand 
once more ’ — very words, sir I — honor bright I 

‘ I think there’s ne’er a man in Christendom 
Cau lesser hide his hate or love than he.’ 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


181 


And if Mr. Yivian has some reason to keep himself con- 
cealed still — if his fortune or ruin depend on your not 
divulging his secret for a while — I can’t think you arc 
the man he need fear. ’Pon my life, 

‘I wish I was as sure of a good dinner,’ 
as the Swan touchingly exclaims. I dare swear that was 
a wish often on the Swan’s lips in the privacy of his 
domestic life I ” 

My heart was softened, not by the pathos of the much 
profaned and desecrated Swan, but by Mr. Peacock’s 
unadorned repetition of Vivian’s words ; I turned my face 
from the sharp eyes of my companion — the cab now 
stopped at the foot of London Bridge. 

I had no more to ask, yet still there was some uneasy 
curiosity in my mind, which I could hardly define to 
myself — was it not jealousy ? Yivian so handsome and 
so daring — he at least might see the great heiress ; Lady 
Ellinor perhaps thought of no danger there. But — I — 
I was a lover still,. and — nay, such thoughts were folly 
indeed I 

“ My man,” said I to the ex-comedian, “ I neither wish 
to harm Mr. Yivian (if I am so to call him), nor you who 
imitate him in the variety of your namea But I tell you 
fairly, that I do not like your being in Mr. Trevanion’s 
employment, and I advise you to get out of it as soon as 
possible. I say nothing more as yet, for I shall take time 
to consider well what you have told me.” 

With that I hastened away, and Mr. Peacock continued 
bis solitary journey over London Bridge, 

II. — 16 2l 


182 


THE CAXTONS: 


CHAPTER VII. 

Amidst all that lacerated my heart, or tormented my 
thoughts, that eventful day, I felt at least one joyous 
emotion, when, on entering our little drawing-room, I 
found my uncle seated there. 

The Captain had placed before him on the table a large 
Bible, borrowed from the landlady. He never travelled, 
to be sure, without his own Bible, but the print of that 
was small, and the Captain’s eyes began to fail him at 
night. So this was a Bible with large type ; and a candle 
was placed on either side of it ; and the Captain leaned his 
elbows on the table, and both his hands were tightly 
clasped upon his forehead — tightly, as if to shut out the 
tempter, and force his whole soul upon the page. 

He sat the image of iron courage ; in every line of that 
rigid form there was resolution. “ I will not listen to my 
heart; I will read the Book, and learn to suffer a? 
becomes a Christian man.” 

There was such a pathos in the stem sufferer’s attitude, 
that it spoke those words as plainly as if his lips had said 
them. 

Old soldier I thou hast done a soldier’s part in many a 
bloody field ; but if I could make visible to the world thy 
brave soldier’s soul, I would paint thee as I saw thee 
then 1 — Out on this tyro’s hand I 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


183 


At the movement I made, the Captain looked up, and 
the strife he had gone through was written upon his face. 

“ It has done me good,’^ said he, simply, and he closed 
the book. 

I drew my chair near to him, and hung my arm over 
bis shoulder. 

“No cheering news, then ? ” asked I, in a whisper. 

Roland shook his head, and gently laid his finger on 
his lips. * 


CHAPTER YIII. 

It was impossible for me to intrude upon Roland’s 
thoughts, whatever their nature, with a detail of those 
circumstances which had roused in me a keen and anxious 
interest in things apart from his sorrow. 

Yet as “restless I roll’d around my weary bed,” and 
revolved the renewal of Vivian’s connection with a man 
of character so equivocal as Peacock, the establishment 
of an able and unscrupulous tool of his own in the service 
of Trevanion, the care with which he had concealed from 
me his change of name, and his intimacy at the very house 
to which I had frankly offered to present him ; the 
familiarity which his creature had contrived to effect with 
Miss Trevanion’s maid, the words that had passed between 
them — plausibly accounted for, it is true, yet still sus- 
picious — and, above all, my painful recollections of 
Vivian’s reckless ambition and unprincipled sentiments — 


184 


THE CAXTONS: 


nay, the efifect that a few random words upon Fanny’s 
fortune, and the luck of winning an heiress, had sufficed 
to produce upon his heated fancy and audacious temper ; 
when all these thoughts came upon me, strong and vivid, 
in the darkness of night, I longed for some confidant, 
more experienced in the world than myself, to advise me 
as to the course I ought to pursue. Should I warn Lady 
Ellinor ? But of what ? — the character of a servant, or 
the designs ?f the fictitious Gower ? Against the first I 
could say, if nothing very positive, still enough to make 
it prudent to dismiss him. But of Gower or Yivian, what 
could I say without — not indeed betraying his confidence, 
for that he had never given me — but without belying the 
professions of friendship that I myself had lavishly made 
to him ? Perhaps, after all, he might have disclosed 
whatever were his real secrets to Trevanion ; and, if not, 
I might indeed ruin his prospects by revealing the aliases 
he assumed. But wherefore reveal, and wherefore warn ? 
Because of suspicions that I could not myself analyse — 
suspicions founded on circumstances, most of which had 
already been seemingly explained away. Still, when 
morning came, I was irresolute what to do ; and after 
watching Roland’s countenance, and seeing on his brow 
BO great a weight of care, that I had no option but to 
postpone the confidence I pined to place in his strong 
understanding and unerring sense of honor, I wandered 
out, hoping that in the fresh air I might recollect my 
thoughts, and solve the problem that perplexed me. F 
bad enough to do in «undry small orders for my voyage, 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


185 


and commissions for Bolding, to occupy me some houps 
And this business done, I found myself moving westward : 
mechanically, as it were, I had come to a kind of half- 
and-half resolution to call upon Lady Ellinor, and question 
her, carelessly and incidentally, both about Gowe^’ and >he 
new servant admitted to the household. 

Thus I found myself in Regent Street, when a carriage, 
borne by post-horses, whirled rapidly over the pavement 

— scattering to the right and left all humbler equipages 

— and hurried, as if on an errand of life and death, up 
the broad thoroughfare leading into Portland Place. 
But, rapidly as the wheels dashed by, I had seen dis- 
tinctly the face of Fanny Trevanion in the carriage, and 
that face wore a strange expression, which seemed to me 
to speak of anxiety and grief; and, by her side — was 
not that the woman I had seen with Peacock? I did 
not see the face of the won^n, but I thought I recognised 
the cloak, the bonnet, and peculiar turn of the head. If 
I could be mistaken there, I was not mistaken at least as 
to the servant on the seat behind. Looking back at a 
butcher’s boy, who had just escaped being run over, and 
was revenging himself by all the imprecations the Dirae 
of London slang could suggest, the face of Mr. Peacock 
was exposed in full to my gaze. 

My first impulse, on recovering my surprise, was to 
spring after the carriage ; in the haste of that impulse, I 
cried “ Stop I ’’ But the carriage was out of sight in a 
moment, and my word was lost in air. Full of presenti- 
ments of some evil — I knew not what — I then altered 
16 * 


t86 


THE OAXTONS: 


my course, and stopped not, till I found myself panting 
and out of breath, in St. James’s Square — at the door 
of Trevanion’s house — in the hall. The porter had a 
newspaper in his hand as he admitted me. 

“Where is Lady Ellinor ? — I must see her instantly.” 

“No worse news of master, I hope, sir I” 

“Worse news of what? — of whom? — of Mr. Tre- 
vanion ? ” 

“ Did you not know he was suddenly taken ill, sir ; 
that a servant came express to say so last night ? Lady 
Ellinor went off at ten o’clock to join him.” 

“At ten o’clock last night?” 

“Yes, sir; the servant’s account alarmed her ladyship 
so much. ” 

“ The new servant, who had been recommended by Mr. 
Gower ? ” 

“Yes, sir — Henry,” answered the porter, staring at 
me. “ Please, sir, here is an account of master’s attack 
in the paper. I suppose Henry took it to the office 
before he came here, which was very wrong in him ; but 
I am afraid he’s a very foolish fellow.” 

“Nevermind that. Miss Trevanion — I saw her just 
now — she did not go with her mother ; where was she 
going, then ? ” 

“Why, sir — but pray step into the parlor.” 

“ No, no — speak ! ” 

‘ Why, sir, before Lady Ellinor set out, she was afrairt 
that there might be something in the papers to alarm 
Miss Fanny, and so she sent Henry down to Lady 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


187 


Castleton-s, to beg her ladyship to make as light of it as 
she could ; but it seems that Henry blabbed the worst to 
Mrs. Mole.*’ 

“ Who is Mrs. Mole ? ’* 

“ Miss Trevanion’s maid, sir — a new maid ; and Mrs. 
Mole blabbed to my young lady, and so she took fright, 
and insisted on coming to town. And Lady Castle ton, 
who is ill herself in bed, could not keep her, I suppose, 
— especially as Henry said, though he ought to have 
known better, ‘ that she would be in time to arrive before 
my lady set off.’ Poor Miss Trevanion was so dis- 
appointed when she found her mamma gone. And then 
she would order fresh horses, and would go on, though 
Mrs. Bates (the housekeeper, you know, sir) was very 
angry with Mrs. Mole, who encouraged Miss ; and ” — 

Good heavens I Why did not Mrs. Bates go with 
her ? ” 

Why, sir, you know how old Mrs. Bates is, and my 
young lady is always so kind that she would not hear of 
it, as she is going to travel night and day; and Mrs. 
Mole said she had gone all over the world with her last 
lady, and that” — 

I see it all. Where is Mr. Gower ? ” 

Mr. Gower, sir I ” 

“Yes I Can’t you answer?” 

“ Why, with Mr. Trevanion, I believe, sir.” 

In the north — what is the address ? ” 

“Lord N , C Hall, near W 

I heard no more. 


188 


THE CAXTONS: 


The conviction of some villanous snare struck me as 
with the swiftness and force of lightning. Why, if Tre- 
vanion were really ill, had the false servant concealed it 
from me ? Why suffered me to waste his time, instead 
of hastening to Lady Ellinor ? How, if Mr. Trevanion’s 
sudden illi ess had brought the man to London — how 
had he known so long beforehand (as he himself told me, 
and his appointment with the waiting-woman proved) 
the day he should arrive ? Why now, if there were no 
design of which Miss Trevanion was the object — why so 
frustrate the provident foresight of her mother, and take 
advantage of the natural yearning of affection, the quick 
impulse of youth, to hurry off a girl whose very station 
forbade her to take such a journey without suitable pro- 
tection — against what must be the wish, and what 
clearly were the instructions, of Lady Ellinor ? Alone, 
worse than alone ! Fanny Trevanion was then in the 
hands of two servants, who were the instruments and con- 
fidants of an adventurer like Yivian ; and that conference 
between those servants — those broken references to the 
morrow, coupled with the name Yivian had assumed : 
needed the unerring instincts of love more cause for 
1 error? — terror the darker, because the exact shape it 
sho ild assume was obscure and indistinct, 

I sprang from the house. 

1 hastened into the Haymarket, summoned a cabriolet, 
drove home as fast as I could (for I had no money about 
me for the journey I meditated) ; sent the servant of the 
lodging to engage a chaise-and four, rushed into the room, 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


189 


where Roland fortunately still was, and exclaimed — 
“Uncle, come with me I — take money, plenty of money 1 
— some villany I know, though I can’t explain it, has 
been practised on the Trevanions. We may defeat it yet 
I will tell you all by the way — come, come 1 ” 

“ Certainly. But villany I — and to people of such a 
station — pooh I — collect yourself. Who is the villain ?” 
“ Oh, the man I had loved as a friend — the man whom 

I myself helped to make known to Trevanion — Yivian 

Vivian I ” 

“ Yivian I — ah, the youth I have heard you speak of. 
But how? — villany to whom — to Trevanion ?” 

“You torture me with your questions. Listen — this 
Yivian (I know him) — he has introduced into the house, 
as a servant, an agent capable of any trick and fraud ; 
that servant has aided him to win over her maid — 
Fanny’s — Miss Trevanion’s. Miss Trevanion is an 
heiress, Yivian an adventurer. My head swims round, I 
cannot explain now. Ha I I will write a line to Lord 
Castleton — tell him my fears and suspicions — he will 
follow us, I know, or do what is best.” 

I drew ink and paper towards me, and wrote hastily. 
My uncle came round and looked over my shoulder 
Suddenly he exclaimed, seizing my arm, “ Gower, 
Gower I What name is this ? You said ‘ Yivian.’ ” 
“Yivian or Gower — the same person.” 

My uncle hurried out of the room. It was natural 
that he should leave me to make our joint and brief pre- 
parations for departure. 


190 


THE CAXTONS. 


I finished my letter, sealed it, and when, five minutes 
afterwards, the chaise came to the door, 1 gave it to the 
ostler who accompanied the horses, with injunctions to 
deliver it forthwith to Lord Castleton himself. 

My uncle now descended, and stepped from the thres- 
hold with a firm stride. “ Comfort yourself,” he said, as 
he entered the chaise, into which I had already thrown 
myself. “ We may be mistaken yet.” 

Mistaken I You do not know this young man. He 
has every quality that could entangle a girl like Fanny, 
and not, I fear, one sentiment of honor, that would stand 
in the way of his ambition. I judge him now as by a 
revelation — too late — oh Heavens, if it be too late I ” 
A groan broke from Roland’s lips. I heard in it a 
proof of sympathy with my emotion, and grasped his 
hand : it was as cold as the hand of the dead. 


PART FIFTEENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

There would have been nothing in what had chanced 
to justify the suspicions that tortured me, but for my im- 
pressions as to the character of Yivian. 

Reader, hast thou not, in the easy, careless sociability 
of youth, formed acquaintance with some one, in whose 
more engaging or brilliant qualities thou hast — not lost 
that dislike to defects or vices which is natural to an age 
when, even while we err, we adore what is good, and glow 
with enthusiasm for the ennobling sentiment and the 
virtuous deed — no, happily, not lost dislike to what is 
bad, nor thy quick sense of it — but conceived a keen in- 
terest in the struggle between the bad that revolted, and 
the good that attracted thee, in thy companion ? Then, 
perhaps, thou hast lost sight of him for a time — suddenly 
thou hearest that he has done something out of the way 
of ordinary good or common-place evil ; and, in either — 
the good or the evil — thy mind runs rapidly back over 
its old reminiscences, and of either thou sayest, “How 
natural I — only So-and-so could have done this thing I ” 

( 191 ) 


192 


THE CAXTONS: 


Thus I felt respecting Vivian. The most remarkable 
qualities in his character were his keen power of calcula- 
tion, and his unhesitating audacity — qualities that lead 
to fame or to infamy, according to the cultivation of the 
moral sense and the direction of the passions. Had I 
recognised those qualities in some agency apparently of 
good — and it seemed yet doubtful if Vivian were the 
agent — I should have cried, “ It is he I and the better 
angel has triumphed ! ” With the same (alas 1 with a yet 
more impulsive) quickness, when the agency was of evil, 
and the agent equally dubious, I felt that the qualities 
revealed the man, and that the demon had prevailed. 

Mile after mile, stage after stage, were passed, on the 
dreary, interminable, high north road. I narrated to my 
companion, more intelligibly than I had yet done, my 
causes for apprehension. The Captain at first listened 
eagerly, then checked me on the sudden. “ There may 
be nothing in all this I ” he cried. “ Sir, we must be men 
here — have our heads cool, our reason clear ; stop ! ” 
And, leaning back in the chaise, Roland refused furthei 
conversation, and, as the night advanced, seemed to sleep. 
I took pity on his fatigue, and devoured my heart in 
silence. At each stage we heard of the party of which 
we were in pursuit. At the first stage or two we were 
less than an hour behind ; gradually, as we advanced, we 
lost ground, despite the most lavish liberality to the post- 
boys. I supposed, at length, that the mere circumstance 
of changing, at each relay, the chaise as well as the horses, 
was the cause of our comparative slowness ; and, on saying 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


193 


this to Roland, as we were changing horses, somewhere 
about midnight, he at once called up the master of the inn, 
and gave him his own price for permission to retain the 
chaise till the journey’s end. This was so unlike Roland’s 
ordinary thrift, whether dealing with my money or his 
cwn — so unjustified by the fortune of either — that I 
could not help muttering something in apology. 

“Can you guess why I was a miser?” said Roland 
calmly. 

“A miser 1 — anything but that I Only prudent — • 
military men often are so.” 

“ I was a miser,” repeated the Captain, with emphasis. 
“ I began the habit first when my son was but a child. 
I thought him high-spirited, and with a taste for extrava- 
gance. ‘Well,’ said I to myself, ‘I will save for him; 
boys will be boys.’ Then, afterwards, when he was no 
more a child (at least he began to have the vices of a 
man), I said to myself, ‘ Patience, he may reform still ; 
if not, I will save money, that I may have power over his 
self-interest, since I have none over his heart. I will 
bribe him into honor I ’ And then — and then — God saw 
that I was very proud, and I was punished. Tell them 
to drive faster — fester — why, this is a snail’s pace I ” 

All that night, all the next day, till towards the 
evening, we pursued our journey, without pause, or other 
‘’ood than a crust of bread and a glass of wine. But we 
now picked up the ground we had lost, and gained upon 
the carriage The night had closed in when we arrived 

at the stage at which the route to Lord N ’s branched 

XL — n 


N 


194 


THE OAXTONS: 


from the direct north road. And here, making our usual 
inquiry, my worst suspicions were confirmed. The car- 
riage we pursued had changed horses an hour before, but 

had not taken the way to Lord N ^s ; — continuing 

the direct road into Scotland. The people of the inn had 
not seen the lady in the carriage, for it was already dark, 
but the man-servant (whose livery they described) had 
ordered the horses. 

The last hope that, in spite of appearances, no treachery 
had been designed, here vanished. The Captain, at first, 
seemed more dismayed than myself, but he recovered 
more quickly. “We will continue the journey on horse- 
back,” he said ; and hurried to the stables. All objections 
vanished at the sight of his gold. In five minutes we 
were in the saddle, with a postilion, also mounted, to 
accompany us. We did the next stage in little more than 
two-thirds of the time which we should have occupied in 
our former mode of travel — indeed, I found it hard to 
keep pace with Roland. We remounted; we were only 
twenty-five minutes behind the carriage. We felt con- 
fident that we should overtake it before it could reach the 
next town — the moon was up — we could see far before 
us — we rode at full speed. Milestone after milestone 
glided by ; the carriage was not visible. We arrived at 
the post-town, or rather village ; it contained but one 
posting-house. We were long in knocking up the ostlers 
— no carriage had arrived just before us ; no ca'-tiage 
had passed the place since noon. 

What mystery was this ? 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


195 


Back, back, boy ! ” said Roland, with a soldier’s quick 
wit, and spurring his jaded horse from the yard. “ They 
will have taken a cross-road or bye-lane. We snail track 
them by the hoofs of the horses, or the print of the 
wheels.” 

Our postilion grumbled, and pointed to the panting 
sides of our horses. For answer Roland opened his hand 
— full of gold. Away we went back through the dull 
sleeping village, back into the broad moonlit thorough- 
fare. We came to a cross-road to the right, but the 
track we pursued still led us straight on. We had 
measured back nearly half the way to the post-town at 
which we had last changed, when lo I there emerged from 
a bye-lane two postilions and their horses I 

At that sight our companion, shouting loud, pushed on 
before us and hailed his fellows. A few words gave us 
the information we sought. A wheel had come off the 
carriage just by the turn of the road, and the young lady 
and her servants had taken refuge in a small inn not many 
yards down the lane. The man-servant had dismissed 
the post-boys after they had baited their horses, saying 
they were to come again in the morning, and bring a 
black smith to repair the wheel. 

“ How came the wheel off ? ” asked Roland sternly. 

“ Why, sir, the linch-pin was all rotted away, I sup- 
pose, and came out” 

Did the servant get off the dickey after you set out, 
and before the accident happened ? ” 

'‘Why, yes. He said the wheels were catching fire, 


196 


THE CAXTONS: 


that they had not the patent axles, and he had forgot to 
have them oiled.” 

And he looked at the wheels, and shortly afterwards 
the linch-pin came out ? Eh ? ” 

“ Anan, sir I ” said the post-boy, staring ; “ why, and 
indeed so it was 1 ” 

“ Come on Pisistratus, we are in time ; but pray God 
— pray God — that” — the Captain dashed his spur into 
the horse’s sides, and the rest of his words was lost to me. 

A few yards back from the causeway, a broad patch 
of green before it, stood the inn — a sullen, old-fashioned 
building of cold grey stone, looking livid in the moon- 
light, with black firs at one side, throwing over half of it 
a dismal shadow. So solitary 1 not a house, not a hut 
near it. If they who kept the inn were such that villany 
might reckon on their connivance, and innocence despair 
of their aid — there was no neighborhood to alarm — no 
refuge at hand. The spot was well chosen. 

The doors of the inn were closed ; there was a light in 
the room below ; but the outside shutters were drawn 
over the windows on the first floor. My uncle paused a 
moment, aad said to the postilion — 

“ Do you know the back way to the premises ? ” 

** No, sir : I doesn’t often come by this way, and they 
bo new folks that have taken the house — and I hear it 
don’t prosper over much.” 

“ Knock at the door ; we will stand a little aside while 
you do so. If any one ask what you want — merely say 
you would speak to the servant — that you have found a 
purse ; — here, hold up mine, ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


19T 


Roland and I had dismounted, and my uncle drew me 
close to the wall by the door. Observing that my im- 
patience ill submitted to what seemed to me idle pre- 
liminaries, 

“ Hist I ” whispered he ; “ if there be anything to con- 
ceal within, they will not answer the door till some one 
has reconnoitred ; were they to see us, they would refuse 
to open. But seeing only the post-boy, whom they will 
suppose at first to be one of those who brou^t the 
carriage, they will have no suspicion. Be ready to rush 
in, the moment the door is unbarred.” 

My uncle’s veteran experience did not deceive him. 
There was a long silence before any reply was made to 
the post-boy’s summons ; the light passed to and fro 
rapidly across the window, as if persons were moving 
within. Roland made sign to the post-boy to knock 
again ; he did so twice — thrice — and at last, from an 
attic window in the roof, a head obtruded, and a voice 
cried, “ Who are you ? — what do you want ? ” 

“ I’m the post-boy at the Red Lion ; I want to see the 
servant with the brown carriage : I have found this 
purse I ” 

“Oh, that’s all? — wait a bit.” 

The head disappeared ; we crept along under the pro- 
jecting eaves of the house ; we heard the bar lifted frcra 
the door ; the door itself cautiously opened ; one spring 
and I stood within, and set my back to the door to admit 
Roland. 

Ho, help I — thieves I — help I ” cried a loud voice, 


198 


THE CAXTONS: 


and I felt a hand gripe at my throat. I struck at 
random in the dark, and with effect, for my blow was 
followed by a groan and a curse. 

Roland, meanwhile, had detected a ray through the 
chinks of a door in the hall, and, guided by it, found his 
way into the room at the window of which we had seen 
the light pass and go, while without. As he threw the 
door open, I bounded after him, and saw, in a kind of 
parlorftwo females — the one a stranger, no doubt the 
hostess, the other the treacherous abigail. Their faces 
evinced their terror. 

“Woman,” I said, seizing the last, “where is Miss 
Trevanion ? ” Instead of replying, the women set up a 
loud shriek. Another light now gleamed from the stair- 
case which immediately faced the door ; and I heard a 
voice, that I recognised as Peacock’s, cry out, “ Who’s 
there? — What’s the matter?” 

I made a rush at the stairs. A burly form (that of 
the landlord, who had recovered from my blow) obstructed 
my way for a moment, to measure its length on the floor 
at the next. It was at the top of the stairs ; Peacock, 
recognised me, recoiled, and extinguished the light. 
Oaths, cries, and shrieks now resounded through the 
dark. Amidst them all, I suddenly heard a voice exclaim, 
“ Here, here 1 — help I ” It was the voice of Fanny. I 
made my way to the right, whence the voice came, and 
received a violent blow. Fortunately, it fell on the arm 
which I extended, as men do who feel their way through 
the dark It was not the right arm, and I seized and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


199 


closed on my assailant. Roland now came up, a candle 
in his hand, and at that sight my antagonist, who was no 
other than Peacock, slipped from me, and made a rush 
at the stairs. But the Captain caught him with his 
grasp of iT’on. Fear nothing for Roland in a contest 
with any single foe, and all my thoughts bent on the 
rescue of her whose voice again broke on my ear, I had 
already (before the light of the candle which Roland held 
went out in the struggle between himself and Peacock) 
caught sight of a door at the end of the passage, and 
thrown myself against it : it was locked, but it shook and 
groaned to my pressure. 

“ Hold back, whoever you are I ” cried a voice from 
the room within, far different from that wail of distress 
which had guided my steps. “ Hold back, at the peril 
of your life I ” 

The voice, the threat, redoubled my strength ; the door 
flew from its fastenings. I stood in the room. I saw 
Fanny at my feet, clasping my hands ; then, raising her- 
self, she hung on my shoulder and murmured “ Saved I ” 
Opposite to me, his face deformed by passion, his eyes 
literally blazing with savage fire, his nostrils distended, 
his lips apart, stood the man I have called Francis 
Yivian. 

“ Fanny — Miss Trevanion — what outrage — what 
villany is this ? You have not met this man at your free 
choice, — oh speak I ” Yivian sprang forward. 

•• Question no one but me. Unhand that lady, — she 
is my betrothed — shall be my wife.” 


20C 


THE CAXTONS: 


No, no, no, — don’t believe him,” cried Fanny ; “ I 
have been betrayed by my own servants — brought here, 
I know not how I I heard my father was ill ; I was on 
my way to him : that man met me here, and dared to — ” 
“Miss Trevanion — yes, I dared to say I loved you.” 
“ Protect me from him I — you will protect me from 
him ? ” 

“ No, madam I ” said a voice behind me, in a deep tone, 
“ it is I who claim the right to protect you from that 
man ; it is I who now draw around you the arm of one 
sacred*, even to him ; it is I who, from this spot, launch 
upon his head — a father’s curse. Violator of the hearth ! 
Baffled ravisher I — go thy way to the doom which thou 
hast chosen for thyself. God will be merciful to me yet, 
and give me a grave before thy course find its close in the 
hulks — or at the gallows I ” 

A sickness came over me — a terror froze my veins — 
I reeled back, and leant for support against the wall. 
Roland had passed his arm round Fanny, and she, frail 
and trembling, clung to his broad breast, looking fearfully 
up to his face. And never in that face, ploughed by deep 
emotions, and dark with unutterable sorrows, had I seen 
an expression so grand in its wrath, so sublime in its 
despair. Following the direction of his eye, stern and 
fixed as the look of one who prophesies a destiny and 
denounces a doom, I shivered as I gazed upon the son. 
TIis whole frame seemed collapsed and shrinking, as if 
already withered by the curse ; a ghastly whiteness over- 
bpread the cheek, usually glowing with the dark bloom 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


201 


of oriental youth ; the knees knocked togetner ; and, at 
last, with a faint exclamation of pain, like the cry of one 
who receives a death-blow, he bowed his face over hia 
clasped hands, and so remained — still, but cowering. 

Instinctively I advanced, and placed myself between 
the father and the son, murmuring, “ Spare him ; see, his 
own heart crushes him down.” Then stealing towards 
the son, I whispered, “ Go, go ; the crime was not com- 
mitted, the curse can be recalled.” But my words touched 
a wrong chord in that dark and rebellious nature. The 
young man withdrew his hands hastily from his face, and 
reared his front in passionate defiance. 

Waving me aside, he cried, “ Away ! I acknowledge no 
authority over my actions and my fate ; I allow no media- 
tor between this lady and myself. Sir,” he continued, 
gazing gloomily on his father — “sir, you forget our 
compact. Our ties were severed, your power over me 
annulled ; I resigned the name you bear ; to you I was, 
and am still, as the dead. I deny your right to step 
between me and the object dearer to me than life.” 

“ Oh I ” (and here he stretched forth his hands towards 
Fanny) — “ Oh, Miss Trevanion, do not refuse me one 
prayer, however you condemn me. Let me see you alone 
but for one moment ; let me but prove to you that, guilty 
as I may have been, it was not from the base motives you 
will hear imputed to me — that it was not the heiress I 
sought to decoy, it was the woman I sought to win ; oh, 
hear me ” 

“ No, no,” murmured Fanny, clinging closer to Roland, 


202 


THE CAXTONS: 


“do not loave me. If, as it seems, he is your son, I 
forgive him; but let him go — I shudder at his very 
voice 1 ” 

“Would you have me, indeed, annihilate the memory 
of the bond between us ? ” said Roland, in a hollow 
voice ; “ would you have me see in you the vile thief, the 
lawless felon, — deliver you up to justice, or strike you to 
my feet ? Let the memory still save you, and begone I ” 

Again I caught hold of the guilty son, and again he 
broke from my grasp. 

“It -is,’’ he said, folding his arms deliberately on his 
oreast — “ it is for me to command in this house ; all who 
are within it must submit to my orders. You, sir, who 
hold reputation, name, and honor, at so high a price, 
how can you fail to see that you would rob them from the 
lady whom you would protect from the insult of my affec- 
tion? How would the world receive the tale of your 
rescue of Miss Trevanion ? how believe that — oh, pardon 

me, madam — Miss Trevanion — Fanny — pardon me I 

am mad ; only hear me — alone — alone — and then if 
you, too, say ‘Begone,’ I submit without a murmur; 1 
allow no arbiter but you.” 

But Fanny still clung closer, and closer still, to Roland. 
At that moment I heard voices and the trampling of feet 
below, and supposing that the accomplices in this villany 
were mustering courage, perhaps, to mount to the assist- 
ance of their employer, I lost all the compassion that had 
hitherto softened my horror of the young man’s crime, 
and all the awe with which that confession had been 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


203 


attended. I therefore, this time, seized the false Vivian 
with a gripe that he could no longer shake off, and said 
sternly — 

“Beware how you aggravate your offence. If strife 
ensues, it will not be between father and son, and ” 

Fanny sprang forward. “Do not provoke this bad 
dangerous man. I fear him not. Sir, I will hear you, 
and alone.” 

“Never I” cried I and Boland simultaneously. 

Vivian turned his look fiercely to me, and with a sullen 
bitterness to his father, and then, as if resigning his former 
prayer, he said — “Well, then, be it so; even in the 
presence of those who judge me so severely, I will speak, 
at least.” He paused, and throwing into his voice a 
passion, that, had the repugnance at his guilt been less, 
would not have been without pathos, he continued to ad- 
dress Fanny : “ I own that, when I first saw you, I might 
have thought of love, as the poor and ambitious think of 
the way to wealth and power. Those thoughts vanished, 
and nothing remained in my heart but love and madness. 
I was as a man in a delirium when I planned this snare. 
I knew but one object — saw but one heavenly vision. 
Oh I mine — mine at least in this vision — are you indeed 
lost to me for ever!” 

There was that in this man’s tone and manner which, 
whether arising from accomplished hypocrisy, or actual, 
if perverted, feeling, would, I thought, find its way at 
once to the heart of a woman who, however wronged, had 
once loved him ; and, with a cold misgiving, I fixed my 


204 


THE CAXTONS: 


eyes on Miss Trevanion. Her look, as she turned with 
a visible tremor, suddenly met mine, and I believe that 
she discerned my doubt, for after suffering her eyes to 
rest on my own, with something of mournful reproach, 
her lips curved as with the pride of her mother, and for 
the first time in my life I saw anger on her brow. 

“ It is well, sir, that you have thus spoken to me in the 
presence of others, for in their presence I call upon you 
to say, by that honor which the son of this gentleman 
may for a while forget, but cannot wholly forfeit, — I call 
upon you to say, whether by deed, word, or sign, I, 
Frances Trevanion, ever gave you cause to believe that I 
returned the feeling you say you entertained for me, or 
encouraged you to dare this attempt to place me in your 
power.” 

“ No I ” cried Yivian readily, but with a writhing lip — 
no ; but where I loved so deeply, perilled all my fortune 
for one fair and free occasion to tell you so alone, I would 
not think that such love could meet only loathing and dis- 
dain. What 1 — has nature shaped me so unkindly, that 
where I love no love can reply ? What I has the accident 
of birth shut me out from the right to woo and mate with 
the high-born ? For the last, at least that gentleman in 
justice should tell you, since it has been his care to instil 
the haughty lesson into me, that my lineage is one that 
befits lofty hopes, and warrants fearless ambition. My 
Lopes, my ambition — they were you ! Oh, Miss Treva- 
nion, it is true that to win you I would have braved the 
world’s laws, defied every foe, save him who now rises 


A FAMILY PICTURE 


205 


before me. Yet, believe me, believe me, had I won what 
1 dared to aspire to, you would not have been disgraced by 
your choice ; and the name, for which I thank not my 
fath^T, should not have been despised by the woman who 
pardoned my presumption, nor by the man who now 
tramples on my anguish and curses me in my desolation.’’ 

Not by a word had Roland sought to interrupt his 
son — nay, by a feverish excitement, which my heart 
understood in its secret sympathy, he had seemed eagerly 
to court every syllable that could extenuate the darkness 
of the offence, or even imply some less sordid motive for 
the baseness of the means. But as the son now closed 
with the words of unjust reproach, and the accents of 
fierce despair — closed a defence that showed, in its false 
pride and its perverted eloquence, so utter a blindness to 
every principle of that Honor which had been the father’s 
idol, Roland placed his hand before the eyes that he had 
previously, as if spell-bound, fixed on the hardened 
offender, and once more drawing Fanny towards him, 
said — 

“ His breath pollutes the air that innocence and honesty 
should breathe. He says, ‘All in this house are at his 
command ’ — why do we stay ? — let us go.” He turned 
towards the door, and Fanny with him. 

Meanwhile, the louder sounds below had been silenced 
for some moments, but I heard a step in the hall. Vivian 
started, and placed himself before us. 

“No, no, you cannot leave me thus. Miss Trevanion. 
I resign you — be it so ; I do not even ask for pardon 

II. — 18 


206 


THE CAXTONS: 


But to leave this house thus, without carriage, without 
attendants, without explanation! — the blame falls on me 
— it shall do so. But at least vouchsafe me the right to 
repair what I yet can repair of the wrong, to protect all 
that is left to me — your name.’’ 

As he spoke, he did not perceive (for he was facing us, 
and with his back to the door) that a new actor had 
noiselessly entered on the scene, and, pausing by the 
threshold, heard his last words. 

“ The name of Miss Trevanion, sir — and from what ? ” 
asked the new comer, as he advanced and surveyed Yivian 
with a look that, but for its quiet, would have seemed 
disdain. 

“ Lord Castleton I ’’ exclaimed Fanny, lifting up the 
face she had buried in her hands. 

Yivian recoiled in dismay, and gnashed his teeth. 

“ Sir,” said the marquis, “ I await your reply ; for not 
even you,. in my presence, shall imply that one reproach 
can be attached to the name of that lady.” 

“ Oh, moderate your tone to me, my Lord Castleton I ” 
cried Yivian : “ in you at least there is one man I am not 
forbidden to brave and defy. It was to save that lady 
from the cold ambition of her parents — it was to prevent 
the sacrifice of her youth and beauty, to one whose sole 
merits are his wealth and his titles — it was this that 
impelled me to the crime I have committed, this that 
hurried me on to risk all for one hour, when youth at 
least could plead its cause to youth ; and this gives me 
now the power to say that it does rest with me to protect 


20T 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 

I 

tlie name of tlie lady, whom your very servility to that 
world which you have made your idol forbids you to claim 
from the heartless ambition that would sacrifice the 
daughter to the vanity of the parents. Ha 1 the future 
Marchioness of Castleton on her way to Scotland with a 
penniless adventurer ! Ha I if my lips are sealed, who 
but I can seal the lips of those below in my secret ? The 
secret shall be kept, but on this condition — you shall not 
triumph where I have failed ; I may lose what I adored, 
but I do not resign it to another. Ha I have I foiled 
you, my Lord Castleton ? — ha, ha I 

“No, sir; and I almost forgive you the villany you 
have not effected, for informing me, for the first time, that 
had I presumed to address Miss Trevanion, her parents 
at least would have pardoned the presumption. Trouble 
not yourself as to what your accomplices may say. They 
have already confessed their infamy and your own. Out 
of my path, sir I ” 

Then, with the benign look of a father, and the lofty 
grace of a prince, Lord Castleton advanced to Fanny. 
Looking round with a shudder, she hastily placed her 
hand in his, and, by so doing, perhaps prevented some 
violence on the part of Yivian, whose heaving breast, 
and eye bloodshot, and still unquailing, showed how 
little even shame had subdued his fiercer passions. But 
he made no offer to detain them, and his tongue seemed 
to cleave to his lips. Now, as Fanny moved to the door, 
she passed Roland, who stood motionless and with vacant 
looks, like an image of stone; and with a beautiful 


208 


THE CAXTONS: 


teuderness, for which (even at this distant date, recalling 
it), I say, “ God requite thee, Fanny,” she laid her other 
hand on Roland’s arm, and said, “ Come too : your arm 
still 1 ” 

But Roland’s limbs trembled, and refused to stir ; his 
head, relaxing, drooped on his breast, his eyes closed. 
Even Lord Castleton was so struck (though unable to 
guess the true and terrible cause of his dejection) that he 
forgot his desire to hasten from the spot, and cried with 
all his kindliness of heart, “ You are ill — you faint, give 
him your arm, Pisistratus.” 

“It is nothing,” said Roland, feebly, as he leaned 
heavily on my arm, while I turned back my head with all 
the bitterness of that reproach which filled my heart, 
speaking in the eyes that sought him, whose place should 
have been where mine now was. And, oh I — thank 
heaven, thank heaven I — the look was not in vain. In 
the same moment the son was at the father’s knees. 

“ Oh, pardon — pardon ! Wretch, lost wretch though 
I be, I bow my head to the curse Let it fall — but on 
me, and on me only — not on your own heart too.” 

Fanny burst into tears, sobbing out, “ Forgive him, as 
I do.” 

Roland did not heed her. 

“ He thinks that the heart was not shattered before the 
curse could come,” he said, in a voice so weak as to be 
scarcely audible. Then, raising his eyes to heaven, his 
lips moved as if he prayed inly. Pausing, he stretched 
his hands over his son’s head, and averting his face, said, 
“ I revoke the curse. Pray to tly God for pardon.” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


209 


Perhaps not daring to trust himself further, he then 
made a violent effort, and hurried from the room. 

We followed silently. When we gained the end of 
the passage, the door of the room we had left closed with 
a sullen jar. 

As the sound smote on my ear, with it came so terrible 
a sense of the solitude upon which that door had closed — 
so keen and quick an apprehension of some fearful impulse, 
suggested by passions so fierce, to a condition so forlorn 
— that instinctively I stopped, and then hurried back to 
the chamber. The lock of the door having been pre- 
viously forced, there was no barrier to oppose my entrance. 
I advanced, and beheld a spectacle of such agony, as can 
only be conceived by those who have looked on the grief 
which takes no fortitude from reason, no consolation from 
conscience — the grief which tells us what would be the 
earth were man abandoned to his passions, and the chance 
of the atheist reigned alone in the merciless heavens. 
Pride humbled to the dust ; ambition shivered into frag- 
ments ; love (or the passion mistaken for it) blasted into 
ashes ; life, at the first onset, bereaved of its holiest ties, 
forsaken by its truest guide I shame that writhed for 
revenge, and remorse that knew not prayer — all, all 
blended, yet distinct, were in that awful spectacle of the 
guilty son. v 

And I had told but twenty years, and my heart had 
^ been mellowed in the tender sunshine of a happy home, 
and I had loved this boy as a stranger, and, lo 1 — he was 
Roland’s son ! I forgot all else, looking upon that an- 
18* 


0 


210 


THE 3AXTONS: 


guish ; and I threw myself on the ground by the form that 
writhed there, and folding my arms round the breast which 
in vain repelled me, I whispered, “ Comfort — comfort — 
life is long. You shall redeem the past, you shall efface 
tlie stain, and your father shall bless you yet I 


CHAPTER II 

I COULD not stay long with my unhappy cousin, but 
still I stayed long enough to make me think it probable 
that Lord Castleton’s carriage would have left the inn : 
and when, as I passed the hall, I saw it standing before 
the open door, I was seized with fear for Roland ; his 
'‘motions might have ended in some physical attack. Nor 
were those fears without foundation. I found Fanny 
kneeling beside the old soldier in the parlor where we had 
seen the two women, and bathing his temples, while Lord 
Castletoa was binding his arm ; and the marquis’s favorite 
valet, v?ho, amongst his other gifts, was something of a 
Burgeon, was wiping the blade of the penknife that had 
served instead of a lancet. Lord Castleton nodded to 
me, “ Don't be uneasy — a little fainting fit — we have bled 
him. He is safe now — see, he is recovering.” 

Roland’s eyes, as they opened, turned to me with an 
anxious, inquiring look. I smiled upon him as I ki.^ised 
his forehead, and could, with a safe conscience, whisper 
words which neither father nor Christian could refuse to 
receive as comfort. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


211 


In a few minutes more we had left the house As 
Lord Castleton’s carriage only held two, the marquis, 
having assisted Miss Trevanion and Roland to enter, 
quietly mounted the seat behind, and made a sign to me 
to come by his side, for there was room for both. (Hia 
servant had taken one of the horses that had brought 
thither Roland and myself, and already gone on before.) 
No conversation took place between us then. Lord 
Castleton seemed profoundly affected, and I had no words 
at my command. 

When we reached the inn at which Lord Castleton had 
changed horses, about six miles distant, the marquis in- 
sisted on Fanny’s taking some rest for a few hours, for 
indeed she was thoroughly worn out. 

I attended my uncle to his room, but he only answered 
my assurances of his son’s repentance with a pressure 
of the hand, and then, gliding from me, went into the 
farthest recess of the room, and there knelt down. When 
he rose, he was passive and tractable as a child. He 
suffered me to assist him to undress ; and when he had 
lain down on the bed, he turned his face quietly from the 
light, and, after a few heavy sighs, sleep seemed merci- 
fully to steal upon him. I listened to his heavy breathing 
till it grew low and regular, and then descended to the 
sitting-room in which I had left Lord Castleton, for he 
had asked me in a whisper to seek him there. 

I found the marquis seated by the fire, in a thoughtful 
and dejected attitude. 

“ I am glad you are come,” said he, making room foi 


212 


THE CAXTONS: 


me on the hearth, “ for I assure you I have not felt so 
mournful for many years ; we have much to explain to 
each other. Will you begin : they say the sound of th'^ 
bell dissipates the thunder-cloud. And there is nothing 
like the voice of a frank, honest nature to dispel all the 
clouds that come upon us when we think of our own 
faults and the villany of others. But I beg you a thou- 
sand pardons — that young man, your relation ! — your 
brave uncle’s son I Is it possible ? ” 

My explanations to Lord Castleton were necessarily 
brief and imperfect. The separation between Roland 
and his son, my ignorance of its cause, my belief in the 
death of the latter, my chance acquaintance with the sup- 
posed Yivian ; the interest I took in him ; the relief it 
was to the fears for his fate with which he inspired me, 
to think he had returned to the home I ascribed to him : 
and the circumstances which had induced my suspicions, 
justified by the result — all this was soon hurried over. 

But, I beg your pardon,” said the marquis, interrupt- 
ing me, “did you, in your friendship for one so unlike 
you^ even by your own partial account, never suspect that 
you had stumbled upon your lost cousin ?” 

“ Such an idea never could have crossed me.” 

And here I must observe, that though the reader, at 
the first introduction of Yivian, would divine the secret, 
— the penetration -of a reader is wholly different from 
that of the actor in events. That I had chanced on one 
of those curious coincidences in the romance of real life, 
which a reader looks out for and expects in following the 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


213 


course of a narrative, was a supposition forbidden to me 
by a variety of causes. There was not the least family 
resemblance between Yivian and any of his relations ; 
and, somehow or other, in Roland’s son I had pictured 
to myself a form and a character wholly different from 
Yivian’s. To me it would have seemed impossible that 
my cousin could have been so little curious to hear any 
of our joint affairs j been so unheedful, or even weary, if 
I spoke of Roland — never, by a word or tone, have be- 
trayed a sympathy with his kindred. And my other 
conjecture was so probable I — son of the Colonel Yivian 
whose name he bore. And that letter, with the post- 
mark of “ Godaiming I ” and my belief, too, in my cousin’s 
death ; even now I am not surprised that the idea never 
occurred to me. 

I paused from enumerating these excuses for my 
dulness, angry with myself, for I noticed that Lord Cas- 
tleton’s fair brow darkened ; — and he exclaimed, “ What 
deceit he must have gone through before he could become 
such a master in the art I ” 

“That is true, and I cannot deny it,” said I. “But 
his punishment now is awful ; let us hope that repentance 
may follow the chastisement. And, though certainly it 
must have been his own fault that drove him from his 
father’s home and guidance, yet, so driven, let us make 
some allowance for the influence of evil companionship on 
one so young — for the suspicions that the knowledge of 
evil produces, and turns into a kind of false knowledge 
of the world. And in this last and worst of all his 
actions” — 


214 


THE CAXTONS: 


how justify that?” 

“ Justify it I — good heavens I justify it 1 — no. I only 
say this, strange as it may seem, that I believe his affec- 
tion for Miss Trevanion was for herself ; so he says, from 
tlic depth of an anguish in which the most insincere of 
men would cease to feign. But no more of this, — she is 
saved, thank Heaven I ” 

“And you believe,?’ said Lord Castleton musingly, 
“ that he spoke the truth when he thought that I” — The 
marquis stopped, colored slightly, and then went on. 
“ But no ; Lady Ellinor and Trevanion, whatever might 
have been in their thoughts, would never have so forgot 
their dignity as to take him, a youth — almost a stranger 
— nay, take any one into their confidence on such a 
subject.” 

“ It was but by broken gasps, incoherent, disconnected 
words, that Yivian, — I mean my cousin, — gave me any 

explanation of this. But Lady N , at whose house 

he was staying, appears to have entertained such a notion, 
or at least led my cousin to think so.” 

“ Ah I that is possible,” said Lord Castleton, with a 

look of relief. “ Lady N and I were boy and girl 

together ; we correspond ; she has written to me suggest- 
ing that Ah I I see, — an indiscreet woman. Hum I 

this coilies of lady correspondents 1 ” 

Lord Castleton had recourse to the Beaudesert mix- 
ture ; and then, as if eager to change the subject, began 
his own explanation. On receiving mv letter, he saw 
even more cause to suspect a snare than I had done, for 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


215 


he had that morning received a letter from Trevanion, 
not mentioning a word about his illness ; and on turning 
f 0 the newspaper, and seeing a paragraph headed, Sud- 
den and alarming illness of Mr. Trevanion,” the marquis 
had suspected some party manoeuvre or unfeeling hoax, 
since the mail that had brought the letter must have 
travelled as quickly as any messenger who had given the 
information to the newspaper. He had, however, imme- 
diately sent down to the office of the journal to inquire 
on what authority the paragraph had been inserted, while 
he despatched another messenger to St. James’s Square. 
The reply from the office was, that the message had been 
brought by a servant in Mr. Trevanion’s livery, but was 
not admitted as news until it had been ascertained by in- 
quiries at the minister’s house that Lady Ellinor had 
received the same intelligence, and actually left town in 
consequence. 

“I was extremely sorry for poor Lady Ellinor’s un- 
easiness,” said Lord Castleton, “ and extremely puzzled, 
but I still thought there could be no real ground for alarm 
until your letter reached me. And when you there stated 
your conviction that Mr. Gower was mixed up in this 
fable, and that it concealed some snare upon Fanny, I 

saw the thing at a glance. The road to Lord N ’s, 

till within the last stage or two, would be the road to 
Scotland. And a hardy and unscrupulous adventurer, 
with the assistance of Miss Trevanion’s servants, might 
thus entrap her to Scotland itself, and there work on her 
fears ; or, if he had hope in her affections, entrap her into 


216 


THE CAXTONS: 


consent to a Scotch marriage. You may be sure, there- 
fore, that T was on the road as soon as possible. But as 
your messenger came all the way from the City, and not 
so quickly perhaps as he might have come ; and then, as 
there was the carriage to see to, and the horses to send 
for, I found myself more than an hour and a half behind 
you. Fortunately, however, I made good ground, and 
should probably have overtaken you half-way, but that, 
on passing between a ditch and a wagon, the carriage 
was upset, and that somewhat delayed me. On arriving 

at the town where the road branched off to Lord N ’s, 

I was rejoiced to learn you had taken what I was sure 
would prove the right direction, and finally I gained the 
clue to that villanous inn, by the report of the postboys 
who had taken Miss Trevanion’s carriage there, and met 
you on the road. On reaching the inn, I found two 
fellows conferring outside the door. They sprang in as 
we drove up, but not before my servant Summers — a 
quick fellow, you know, who has travelled with me from 
Norway to Nubia — had quitted his seat, and got into 
the house, into which I followed him with a step, you 
dog, as active as your own I Egad I I was twenty-one 
then ! Two fellows had already knocked down poor 
Summers and showed plenty of fight. Do you know,’^ 
said the marquis, interrupting himself with an air of serio- 
comic humiliation — “do you know that I actually — no, 
you never will believe it — mind ’tis a secret — actually 
broke my cane over one fellow’s shoulders ? — look I ” 
''and the marquis held up the fragment of the lamented 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


2n 

weapon). “ And I half suspect, but I can’t say positively, 
that I had even the necessity to demean myself by a blow 
with the naked hand — clenched too I — quite Eton again 
— upon my honor it was. Ha, ha I ” 

And the marquis — whose magniBcent proportions, in 
the full vigor of man’s strongest, if not his most combat- 
ive, age, would have made him a formidable antagonist, 
even to a couple of prize-fighters, supposing he had re- 
tained a little of Eton skill in such encounters — laughed 
with the glee of a school-boy, whether at the thought of 
his prowess, or his sense of the contrast between so rude 
a recourse to primitive warfare, and his own indolent 
habits, and almost feminine good temper. Composing 
himself, however, with the quick recollection how little I 
could share his hilarity, he resumed gravely, “ It took us 
some time — 1 don’t say to defeat our foes ; but to bind 
them, which I thought a necessary precaution ; — one 
fellow, Trevanion’s servant, all the while stunning me 
with quotations from Shakspeare. I then gently laid 
hold of a gown, the bearer of which had been long trying 
to scratch me ; but being luckily a small woman, had not 
succeeded in reaching to my eyes. But the gown escaped, 
and fluttered off to the kitchen. I followed, and there I 
found Miss Trevanion’s Jezebel of a maid. She was 
terribly frightened, and affected to be extremely penitent, 
I own to you that I don’t care what a man says in the 
way of slander, but a woman’s tongue against another 
woman — especially if that tongue be in the mouth of a 
lady’s lady — I think it always worth silencing ; I there- 
TI. — 19 


218 


THE CAXTONS: 


fore consented to pardon this woman on condition she 
would find her way here before morning. No scandal 
shall come from her. Thus you see some minutes elapsed 
before I joined you ; but I minded that the less, as I 
heard you and the Captain were already in the room with 
Miss Trevanion ; and not, alas 1 dreaming of your con- 
nection with the culprit, I was wondering what could 
have delayed you so long — afraid, I own it, to find that 
Miss Trevanion’s heart might have been seduced by that — 
hem — hem handsome — young — hem — hem I — There’s 
no fear of that ? ” added Lord Castleton, anxiously, as he 
bent his bright eyes upon mine. 

I felt myself color as I answered firmly, “ It is just to 
Miss Trevanion to add, that the unhappy man owned, in 
her presence and in mine, that he had never had the 
slightest encouragement for his attempt — never one 
cause to believe that she approved the affection which, I 
try to think, blinded and maddened himself.” 

“ I believe you ; for I think ” — Lord Castleton paused 
uneasily, again looked at me, rose, and walked about the 
room with evident agitation ; then, as if he had come to 
some resolution, he returned to the hearth and stood 
facing me. 

“ My dear young friend,” said he, with his irresistible 
kindly frankness, “this is an occasion that excuses all 
things between us, even my impertinence. Your conduct 
from first to last has been such, that I wish, from the 
bottom of my heart, that I had a daughter to offer you, 
and that you felt for her as I believe you feel for Miss 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


219 


Trevanion. These are not mere words ; do not look 
down as if ashamed. All the marquisates in the world 
would never give me the pride I should feel, if I could 
see in my life one steady self-sacrifice to duty and honor, 
equal to that which I have witnessed in you.” 

“ Oh, my lord I my lord I ” 

“ Hear me out. That you love Fanny Trevanion I 
know ; that she may have innocently, timidly, half-uncon- 
sciously, returned that affection, I think probable. 
But” — 

“ I know what you would say ; spare me — I know it 
all.” 

“ No I it is a thing impossible ; and, if Lady EUinor 
could consent, there would be such a life-long regret on 
her part, such a weight of obligation on yours, that — 
no, I repeat, it is impossible I But let us both think of 
this poor girl. I know her better than you can — have 
known her from a child ; know all her virtues — they are 
charming; all her faults — they expose her to danger. 
These parents of hers — with their genius and ambition 
— may do very well to rule England, and influence the 
world ; but to guide the fate of that child — no 1 ” Lord 
Casileton stopped, for he was affected. I felt my old 
jealousy return, but it was no longer bitter. 

“ I say nothing,” continued the marquis, “ of this 
position, in which, without fault of hers. Miss Trevanion 
ks placed : Lady Ellinor’s knowledge of the world, and 
woman’s wit, will see how all that can be best put right. 
Still it is awkward, and demands much consideration 


THE CAXTONS* 


But, putting this aside altogether, if you do firmly believe 
that Miss Trevanion is lost to you, can you bear to think 
that she is to be flung as a mere cipher in the account of 
the worldly greatness of an aspiring politician — married 
to some minister, too busy to watch over her ; or some 
duke, who looks to pay off his mortgages with her fortune 
— minister or duke only regarded as a prop to Tre- 
vanion’s power against a counter-cabal, or as giving his 
section a preponderance in the cabinet ? Be assured such 
is her most likely destiny, or rather the beginning of a 
destiny yet more mournful. Now, I tell you this, that he. 
who marries Fanny Trevanion should have little other 
object, for the first few years of marriage, than to correct 
her failings and develop her virtues. Believe one who, 
alas ! has too dearly bought his knowledge of woman — 
hers is a character to be formed. Well, then, if this 
prize be lost to you, would it be an irreparable grief to 
your generous affection to think that it has fallen to the 
lot of one who at least knows his responsibilities, and who 
will redeem his own life, hitherto wasted, by the steadfast 
endeavor to fulfil them ? Can you take this hand still, 
and press it, even though it be a rival’s ? ” 

“ My lord ! This from you to me, is an honor that — ” 
“ You will not take my hand ? Then, believe me, it is 
not I that will give that grief to your heart.” 

Touched, penetrated, melted, by this generosity in a 
man of such lofty claims, to one of my age and fortunes, 
i pressed that noble hand, half raising it to my lips — an 
action of respect that would have misbecome neither : but 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


22: 


he gently withdrew the hand, in the instinct of his natural 
modesty. I had then no heart to speak further on such 
a subject, but faltering out that I would go and see my 
uncle, I took up the light, and ascended the stairs. I 
crtpt noiselessly into Roland’s room, and shading the 
light, saw that, though he slept, his face was very 
troubled. And then I thought, “What are my young 
griefs to his ? ” and sitting beside the bed, communed 
with my own heart, and was still I 


CHAPTER III. 

At sunrise I went down into the sitting-room, having 
resolved to write to my father to join us ; for I felt how 
much Roland needed his comfort and his counsel, and it 
was no great distance from the old Tower. I was sur- 
prised to find Lord Castleton still seated by the fire ; he 
had evidently not gone to bed. 

“ That’s right,” said he ; “ we must encourage each 
other to recruit nature,” and he pointed to the breakfast 
things on the table. 

I had scarcely tasted food for many hours, but I was 
only aware of my own hunger by a* sensation of faintness. 
I ate unconsciously, and was almost ashamed to feel how 
much the food restored me. 

“I suppose,” said I, “that you will soon set oif to 
IjC'd N.’s?” 

19 ^ 


222 


THE CAXTONS : 


Nay, did I not tell you, that I have sent Summers 
express, with a note to Lady Ellinor, begging her to 
come here ? I did not see, on reflection, how I could 
decorously accompany Miss Trevanion alone, without even 
a female servant, to a house full of gossiping guests. 
An i even had your uncle been well enough to go with us, 
his presence would but have created an additional cause 
for wonder; so, as soon as we arrived, and while you 
went up with the Captain, I wrote my letter and despatched 
my man. I expect Lady Ellinor will be here before nine 
o’clock. Meanwhile, I have already seen that infamous* 
waiting-woman, and taken care to prevent any danger 
from her garrulity. And you will be pleased to hear that 
I have hit upon a mode of satisfying the curiosity of our 
friend, Mrs. Grundy — that is, ‘the World’ — without 
injury to any one. We must suppose that that footman 
of Trevanion’s was out of his mind — it is but a charitable, 
and your good father would say, a philosophical supposi- 
tion. All great knavery is madness I The world could 
not get on if truth and goodness were not the natural 
tendencies of sane minds. Do you understand ? ” 

“Not quite.” 

“ Why, the footman, being out of his mind, invented 
this mad story of Trevanion’s illness, frightened Lady 
Ellinor and Miss Trevanion out of their wits with his 
ow’u chimera, and hurried them both off, one after the 
other. I having heard from Trevanion, and knowing he 
could not have been ill when the servant left him, set off, 
as was natural in so old a friend of the family, saved hei 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


223 


from the freaks of a maniac, who, getting more and more 
flighty, was beginning to play the Jack o’ Lantern, and 
leading her. Heaven knows where, over the country ; — 
and then wrote to Lady EUinor to come to her. It is 
but a hearty laugh at our expense, and Mrs. Grundy is 
content. If you don’t want her to pity, or backbite, let 
her laugh. She is a she-Cerberus — she wants to eat 
you ; well — stop her mouth with a cake. 

Yes,” continued this better sort of Aristippus, so wise 
under all his seeming levities; “the cue thus given, 
• everything favors it. If that rogue of a lackey quoted 
Shakspeare as much in the servants’ hall as he did while 
I was binding him neck and heels in the kitchen, that’s 
enough for all the household to declare he was moon- 
stricken ; and if we find it necessary to do anything more, 
why, we must induce him to go into Bedlam for a month 
or two. The disappearance of the waiting-woman is 
natural ; either I or Lady Ellinor send her about her 
business for her folly in being so gulled by the lunatic. 
If that’s unjust, why, injustice to servants is common 
enough — public and private. Neither minister nor lackey 
can be forgiven, if he help us into a scrape. One must 
vent one’s passion on something. Witness my poor cane ; 
though, indeed, a better illustration would be the cane 
that Louis XIY. broke on a footman, because his majesty 
was out of humor with the prince, whose shoulders were 
too sacred for royal indignation. 

“ So you see,” concluded Lord Castleton, lowering his 
voice, “ that your uncle, amongst all his other causes of 


224 


THE CAXTONS: 


sorrow, may think at least that his name is spared in his 
son’s. And the young man himself may find reform 
easier, when freed from that despair of the possibility of 
redemption, which Mrs. Grundy inflicts upon those who — 
Courage, then ; life is long I ” 

“ My very words I ” I cried ; “ and so repeated by you, 
Lord Castleton, they seem prophetic.” 

“ Take my advice, and don’t lose ‘sight of your cousin, 
while his pride is yet humbled, and his heart perhaps 
softened. I don’t say this only for his sake. No, it is 
your poor uncle I think of ; noble old fellow 1 And now, • 
I think it right to pay Lady Ellinor the respect of repair- 
ing, as well as I can, the havoc three sleepless nights have 
made on the exterior of a gentleman who is on the shady 
side of remorseless forty.” 

Lord Castleton here left me, and I wrote to my father, 
begging him to meet us at the next stage (which was the 
nearest point from the high road to the Tower), and I 
sent off the letter by a messenger on horseback. That 
task done, I leaned my head upon my hand, and a pro- 
found sadness settled upon me, despite all my efforts to 
face the future, and think only of the duties of life — nofc 
its sorrows. 


A FAMILY PIOTUEE. 


225 


CHAPTER lY. 

Before nine o^clock, Lady Ellinor arrived^ and went 
straight into Miss Trevanion’s room. I took refuge in 
my uncle’s. Roland was awake and calm, bi.t so feeble 
that he made no effort to rise ; and it was his calm, indeed, 
that alarmed me the most — it was like the calm of nature 
thoroughly exhausted. He obeyed me mechanically, as a 
patient takes from your hand the draught, of which he is 
almost unconscious, when I pressed him to take food. 
He smiled on me faintly, when I spoke to him ; but made 
me a sign that seemed to implore silence. Then he turned 
his face from me, and buried it in the pillow; and I 
thought that he slept again, when, raising himself a little, 
and feeling for my hand, he said, in a scarcely audible 
voice, 

“ Where is he ? ” 

“Would you see him, sir?” 

“No, no ; that would kill me — and then — what would 
become of him ? ” 

“ He has promised me an interview, and in that inter- 
view I feel assured he will obey your wishes, whatever 
they are.” 

Roland made no answer. 

“ Lord Castleton has arranged all, so that his name and 
madness (thus let us call it) will never be known.” 


226 


THE 0 AXTONS : 


•‘Pride, pride I pride still I ” — murmured tlie old soldier. 
“ The name, the name — well, that is much ; but the Ihing 
soul I — I wish Austin were here.” 

“I have sent for him, sir.” 

Roland pressed my hand, and was again silent. Then 
he began to mutter, as I thought, incoherently, about the 
Peninsula and obeying orders ; and how some officer woke 
Lord Wellington at night, and said that something or 
other (I could not catch what — the phrase was technical 
and military) was impossible ; and how Lord Wellington 
asked “ Where’s the order-book ? ” and looking into the 
order-book, said, “ Not at all impossible, for it is in the 
order-book ; ” and so Lord Wellington turned round and 
went to sleep again. Then suddenly Roland half rose, 
and said in a voice clear and firm, “But Lord Wellington, 
though a great captain, was a fallible man, sir, and the 
order-book was his own mortal handiwork. — Get me the 
Bible 1 ” 

Oh Roland, Roland I and I had feared that thy mind 
was wandering 1 

So I went down and borrowed a Bible, in large charac- 
ters, and placed it on the bed before him, opening the 
shutters, and letting in God’s day upon God’s word. 

I had just done this, when there was a slight knock at 
the door. I opened it, and Lord Castleton stood with- 
out. He asked me, in a whisper, if he might see my 
uncle. I drew him in gently, and pointed to .the soldier 
of life, “learning what was not impossible,” from the un- 
erring Order-Book. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


227 


Lord Castleton gazed with a changing countenance, 
and, without disturbing my uncle, stole back. I followed 
him, and gently closed the door. 

“ You must save his son,” he said, in a faltering voice 
— “ you must ; and tell me how to help you. That 
sight I — no sermon ever touched me more. Now come 
down, and receive Lady Ellinor’s thanks. We are going. 
She wants me to tell my own. tale to my old friend, Mrs. 
Grundy : so I go with them. Come I ” 

On entering the sitting-room, Lady Ellinor came up 
and fairly embraced ine. I need not repeat her thanks, 
still less the praises, which fell cold and hollow on my 
ear. My gaze rested on Fanny, where she stood apart — 
her eyes, heavy with fresh tears, bent on the ground. 
And the sense of all her charms — the memory of the 
tender, exquisite kindness she had shown to the stricken 
father I the generous pardon she had extended to the 
criminal son ; the looks she had bent upon me on that 
memorable night — looks that had spoken such trust in 
my presence — the moment in which she had clung to me 
for protection, and her breath been warm upon my 
cheek — all these rushed over me; and I felt that the 
struggle of months was undone — that I had never loved 
her as I loved her then — when I saw her but to lose hei 
evermore 1 And then there came for the first, and, I now 
rejoice to think, for the only time, a bitter, ungrateful 
accusation against the cruelty of fortune and the dispari- 
ties of life. What was it that set our two hearts eternally 
apart, and made hope impossible ? Not nature, but the 


228 


THE CAXTONS: 


fortune that gives a sei3ond nature to the world. Ah, 
'.ould I then think that it is in that second nature that 
the soul is ordained to seek its trials, and that the 
elements of human virtue find their harmonious place I 
What I answered I know not. Neither know I how 
long I stood there listening to sounds which seemed to 
have no meaning, till there came other sounds which in- 
deed wo/ke my sense, and made my blood run cold to 
hear, — the tramp of the horses, the grating of the 
wheels, the voice at the door that said, “ All was ready, 
Then Fanny lifted her eyes, and they met mine ; and 
then involuntarily and hastily she moved a few steps to- 
wards me, and I clasped my right hand to my heart, as 
If to still its beating, and remained still. Lord Castleton 
had watched us both. I felt that watch was upon us 
though I had till then shunned his looks : now, as I turned 
my eyes from Fanny’s, that look came full upon me — • 
soft, compassionate, benignant. Suddenly, and with an 
unutterable expression of nobleness, the marquis turned 
to Lady Ellinor, and said — “ Pardon me for telling you 
an old story. A friend of mine — a man of my own 
years — had the temerity to hope that he might one day 
or other win the affections of a lady young enough to be 
his daughter, and whom circumstances and his own heart 
led him to prefer from all her sex. My friend had many 
rivals ; and you will not wonder — for you have seen the 
lady. Among them was a young gentleman, who for 
months had been an inmate of the same house — (Hush, 
Lady Ellinor I you will hear me out ; the interest of my 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


220 


story is to come) — who respected the sanctity of the 
house he had entered, and had left it when he felt he 
loved, for he was poor and the lady rich. Some timS 
after, this gentleman saved the lady from a great danger, 
and was then on the eve of leaving England — (Hush ! 
again hush I ) My friend was present when these two 
young persons met, before the probable absence of many 
years, and so was the mother of the lady to whose hand 
he still hoped one day to aspire. He saw that his young 
rival wished to say, ‘ Farewell I ’ and without a witness ; 
that farewell was all that his honor and his reason could 
suffer him to say. My friend saw that the lady felt the 
natural gratitude for a great service, and the natural pity 
for a generous and unfortunate affection ; for so Lady 
Ellinor, he only interpreted the sob that reached his ear I 
What think you my friend did ? Your high mind at once 
conjectures. He said to himself — ‘ If I am ever to be 
blest with the heart which, in spite of disparity of years, 
I yet hope to win, let me show how entire is the trust 
that I place in its integrity and innocence : let the romance 
of first youth be closed — the farewell of pure hearts be 
spoken — unembittered by the idle jealousies of one mean 
suspicion.^ With that thought, which you^ Lady Ellinor, 
will never stoop to blame, he placed his hand on that of 
the noble mother, drew her gently towards the door, and 
cilmly confident of the result, left these two young natures 
to the unwitnessed impulse of maiden honor and manly 
duty.” 

All this was said and done with a grace and earnestness 

n. — 20 2o 


230 


THE OAXTONS: 


that thrilled the listeners : word and action suited to each 
with so inimitable a harmony, that the spell was not 
broken till the voice ceased and the door closed. 

That mournful bliss for which I had so pined was 
vouchsafed : I was alone with her to whom, indeed, honor 
and reason forbade me to say more than the last farewell. 

It was some time before we recovered — before we felt 
we were alone. 

0, ye moments, that I can now recall with so little 
sadness in the mellow and sweet remembrance, rest ever 
holy and undisclosed in the solemn recesses of the heart 
Yes I — whatever confession of weakness was interchanged, 
we were not unworthy of the trust that permitted the 
mournful consolation of the parting. No trite love-tale 
— with vows not to be fulfilled, and hopes that the future 
must belie — mocked the realities of the life that lay be- 
fore us. Yet on the confines of the dream we saw the 
day rising cold upon the world ; and if — children as we 
well-nigh were — we shrunk somewhat from the light, we 
did not blaspheme the sun, and cry “ There is darkness 
in the dawn I ” 

All that we attempted was to comfort and strengthen 
each other for that which must be : not seeking to con- 
ceal the grief we felt, but promising, with simple faith, to 
struggle against the grief. If vow were pledged between 
us — that was the vow — each for the other’s sake would 
strive to enjoy the blessings Heaven left us still. Well 
may I say that we were children I I know not, in the 
broken words that passed between us, in the sorrowful 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 23J 

hearts which those words revealed — I know not if there 
were that which they who own, in human passion, but 
the storm and the whirlwind, would call the love of 
maturer years — the love that gives fire to the song, and 
tragedy to the stage ; but I know that there was neither 
a word nor a thought which made the sorrow of the 
children a rebellion to the heavenly Father. 

And again the door unclosed, and Fanny walked with 
a firm step to her mother’s side, and, pausing there, ex- 
tended her hand to me, and said, as I bent over it, 
“ Heaven will be with you ! ” 

A word from Lady Ellinor ; a frank smile from him — 
the rival ; one last, last glance from the soft eyes of 
Fanny, and then Solitude rushed upon me — rushed, as 
something visible, palpable, overpowering. I felt it in 
the glare of the sunbeam — I heard it in the breath of 
the air ! like a ghost it rose there — where she had filled 
the space with her presence but a moment before. A 
something seemed gone from the universe for ever ; a 
change like that of death passed through my being j and 
when I woke to feel that my being lived again, I knew 
that it was my youth and its poet-land that were no more, 
and that I had passed, with an unconscious step, which 
never could retrace its way, into the hard world 
Kborious man ! 


PART SIXTEENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

*' Please, sir, be this note for you ? ” asked the waiter. 

For me — yes; it is my name.” 

I did not recognise the handwriting, and yet the note 
TV as from one whose writing I had often seen. But 
formerly the writing was cramped, stiff, perpendicular (a 
feigned hand, though I guessed not it was feigned ;) now 
it was hasty, irregular, impatient — scarce a letter formed, 
scarce a word that seemed finished — and yet strangely 
legible withal, as the handwriting of a bold man almost 
always is. I opened the note listlessly, and read — 

“ I have watched for you all the morning. I saw her 
go Well 1 — I did not throw myself under the hoofs of 
the horses. I write this in a public-house, not far. 
Will you follow the bearer, and see once again the out- 
cast whom all the rest of the world will shun ? ” 

Though I did not recognise the hand, there could be 
no doubt who was the writer 


( 232 ) 


A PA MILS' PICTURE. 


233 


The boy wants to know if there^s an answer,” said 
the waiter. 

T nodded, took up my hat, and left the room. A 
ragged boy was standing in the yard, and scarcely six 
words passed between us, before I was following him 
through a narrow lane that faced the inn, and terminated 
in a turnstile. Here the boy paused, and making me a 
sign to go on, went back his way whistling. I passed 
the turnstile, and found myself in a green field, with a 
row of stunted willows hanging over a narrow rill. I 
looked round, and saw Yivian (as I intended still to call 
him) half kneeling, and seemingly intent upon some 
object in the grass. 

My eye followed his mechanically. A young unfledged 
bird that had left the nest too soon, stood, all still and 
alone, on the bare short sward — its beak open as for 
food, its gaze fixed on us with a wistful stare. Me- 
thought there was something in the forlorn bird that 
softened me more to the forlorner youth, of whom it 
seemed a type. 

“Now,” said Vivian, speaking half to himself, half to 
me, “ did the bird fall from the nest, or leave the nest at 
its own wild whim ? The parent does not protect it 
Mind, I say not it is the parent’s fault — perhaps the fault 
is all with the wanderer. But, look you, though the 
parent is not here, the foe is I — yonder, see I ” 

And the young man pointed to a large brindled cat, 
that, kept back from its prey by our unwelcome neighbor- 
hood, still remained watchful, a few paces off, stirring its 
20 ♦ 


THE CAXTONS: 


tail gently backwards and forwards, and with that stealthy 
look in its round eyes, dulled by the sun — half fierce, 
half frightened — which belongs to its tribe, when man 
comes between the devourer and the victim. 

“ I do see,” said I ; “ but a passing footstep has saved 
the bird I ” 

“Stop !” said Vivian, laying my hand on his own — 
and with his old bitter smile on his lip — “ stop I do you 
think it mercy to save the bird ? What from and what 
for? From a natural enemy — from a short pang and a 
quick death ? Fie I — is not that better than slow star- 
vation ? or, if you take more heed of it, than the prison- 
bars of a cage ? You cannot restore the nest, you cannot 
recall the parent 1 Be wiser in your mercy : leave the bird 
to its gentlest fate I ” 

I looked hard on Vivian ; the lip had lost the bitter 
smile. He rose and turned away. I sought to take up 
the poor bird, but it did not know its friends, and ran 
from me, chirping piteously — ran towards the very jaws 
of the grim enemy. I was only just in time to scare away 
the beast, which sprang up a tree, and glared dowu 
through the hanging boughs. Then I followed the bird, 
and, as I followed, I heard, not knowing at first whence 
the sound came, a short, quick, tremulous note. Was it 
near ? was it far ? — from the earth ? in the sky ? — Poor 
parent-bird I like parent-love, it seemed now far and now 
near ; now on earth, now in sky I 

And at last, quick and sudden, as if born of the space, 
lo I the little wings hovered over me I 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


235 


The young bird halted, and I also. 

“ Come,” said I, “ye have found each other at last; 
pettle it between you 1 ” 

I went back to the outcast. 


CHAPTER II. 

PisiSTRAUus. — How came you to know we had stayed 
(n the town ? 

Vivian. — Do you think I could remain where you 
left me? I wandered out — wandered hither. Passing 
at dawn through yon streets, I saw the ostlers loitering 
about the gates of the yard, overheard them talk, and so 
knew you were all at the inn — all I [He sighed heavily.] 

Pisistratus. — Your poor father is very ill I 0 cousin, 
bow could you fling from you so much love 1 

Vivian. — Love I — his I — my father’s I 

Pisistratus. — Do you really not believe, then, that 
your father loved^you ? 

Vivian. — If I had believed it, I had never left him I 
All the gold of the Indies had never bribed me to leave 
my mother 1 

Pisistratus. — This is indeed a strange misconception 
of yours. If we can remove it, all may be well yet. Need 
there now be any secrets between us ? [Persuasively]. — 
Sit down, and tell me all, cousin. 

After some hesitation, Vivian complied ; and by the 
20 * 


236 


THE C AXT0N8 ; 


clearing of his brow, and the very tone of his voice, I feli 
sure that he was no longer seeking to disguise the truth. 
But, as I afterwards learned the father’s tale as well as 
now the son’s, so, instead of repeating Vivian’s words, 
which — not by design, but by the twist of a mind habit- 
ually wrong — distorted the facts, I will state what 
appears to me the real case, as between the parties so un- 
happily opposed. Reader, pardon me if the recital be 
tedious. • And if thou thinkest that I bear not hard 
enough on the erring hero of the story, remember, that he 
who recites judges as Austin’s son must judge of Roland’s. 


CHAPTER III. 

VIVIAN. 

AT THE ENTRANCE OP LIFE SITS — THE MOTHER. 

It was during the war in Spain that a severe wound, 
and the fever which ensued, detained Roland at the house 
of a Spanish widow. His hostess had once been rich ; 
but her fortune had been ruined in the general calamities 
of the country. She had an only daughter, who assisted 
to nurse and tend the wounded Englishman ; and when 
the time approached for Roland’s departure, the frank 
grief of the young Ramouna betrayed the impression that 
the guest had made upon her affections. Much of grati- 
tude, and something, it might be, of an exquisite sense of 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


237 


nonor, aided, in Roland’s breast, the charm natu^'allj 
produced by the beauty of his young nurse, and the 
knightly compassion he felt for her ruined fortunee and 
desolate condition. 

In one of those hasty impulses common to a generous 
nature — and which too often fatally vindicate the rank 
of Prudence among the tutelary Powers of Life — Roland 
committed the error of marriage with a girl of whose con- 
nections he knew nothing, and of whose nature little moro 
than its warm spontaneous susceptibility. In a few days 
subsequent to these rash nuptials, Roland rejoined the 
march of the army ; nor was he able to return to Spain 
till after the crowning victory of Waterloo. 

Maimed by the loss of a limb, and with the scars of 
many a noble wound still fresh, Roland then hastened to 
a home, the dreams of which had soothed the bed of pain, 
and now replaced the earlier visions of renown. During 
his absence a son had been born to him — a son whom he 
might rear to take the place he had left in his country’s 
service ; to renew, in some future fields, a career that had 
foiled the romance of his own antique and chivalrous am- 
bition. As soon as that news had reached him, his care 
had been to provide an English nurse for the infant — so 
that, with the first sounds of the mother’s endearments, 
the child might yet hear a voice from the father’s land. A 
female relation of Bolt’s had settled in Spain, and was in- 
du(*ed to undertake this duty. Natural as this appoint 
ment was to a man so devotedly English, it displeased 
his wild and passionate Ramouna. She had that mother’s 


238 


THE CAXTONS: 


jealousy, strongest in minds uneducated ; she had also 
^hat peculiar pride which belongs to her country-people, 
of every rank and condition ; the jealousy and the pride 
were both wounded by the sight of the English nurse at 
the child’s cradle. 

That Roland, on regaining his Spanish hearth, should 
be disappointed in his expectations of the happiness 
awaiting him there, was the inevitable condition of such 
a marriage ; since, not the less for his military bluntness 
Roland had that refinement of feeling, perhaps over- 
fastidious, which belongs to all natures essentially poetic : 
and as the first illusions of love died away, there could 
have been little indeed congenial to his stately temper in 
one divided from him by an utter absence of education, 
and by the strong, but nameless, distinctions of national 
views and manners. The disappointment, probably, how- 
ever, went deeper than that which usually attends an ill- 
assorted union ; for, instead of bringing his wife to his 
old Tower (an expatriation which she would doubtless 
have resisted to the utmost,) he accepted, maimed as he 
was, not very long after his return to Spain, the offer of 
a military post under Ferdinand. The Cavalier doctrines 
and intense loyalty of Roland attached him, without re- 
flection, to the service of a throne which the English arms 
had contributed to establish ; while the extreme un- 
popularity of the Constitutional Party in Spain, and the 
stigma of irreligion fixed to it by the priests, aided to 
foster Roland’s belief that he was supporting a beloved 
king against the professors of those revolutionary and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


238 


.Tacobinical doctrines, which to him were the very atheism 
of politics. The experience of a few years in the service 
of a bigot so contemptible as Ferdinand, whose highest 
object of patriotism was the restoration of the Inquisition, 
added another disappointment to those which had already 
embittered the life of a man who had seen in the grand 
hero of Cervantes no follies to satirise, but high virtues 
to imitate. Poor Quixote himself — he came mournfully 
back to his La Mancha, with no other reward for hiS 
knight-errantry than a decoration which he disdained to 
place- beside his simple Waterloo medal, and a grade for 
which he would have blushed to resign his more modest, 
but more honorable English dignity. 

But, still weaving hopes, the sanguine man returned to 
his Penates. His child had now grown from infancy into 
boyhood — the child would pass naturally into his care. 
Delightful occupation I — At the thought, home smiled 
again. 

Now behold the most pernicious circumstance in thi 
ill-omened connection. 

The father of Ramouna had been one of that strange 
and mysterious race which presents in Spain so many 
features distinct from the characteristics of its kindred 
tribes in more civilised lands. The Gitano, or gipsy of 
Spain, is not the mere vagrant we see on our commons 
and road-sides. Retaining, indeed, much of his lawless 
principles and predatory inclinations, he lives often in 
towns, exercises various callings, and iioi unfrequently 
becomes rich. A wealthy Gitano had married a Spanish 


240 


THE CAXTONS : 


woman ; * Roland’s wife had been the offspring of this 
marriage. The Gitano had died while Ramouna was 
yet extremely young, and her childhood had been free 
from the influences of her paternal kindred. But, though 
her mother, retaining her own religion, had brought up 
Ramouna in the same faith, pure from the godless creed 
of the Gitano — and, at her husband’s death, had 
separated herself wholly from his tribe — still she had 
lost caste with her own kin and people. And while 
struggling to regain it, the fortune, which made her sole 
chance of success in that attempt, was swept away, so 
that she had remained apart and solitary, and could bring 
no friends to cheer the solitude of Ramouna during 
Roland’s absence. But, while my uncle was still in the 
service of Ferdinand, the widow died ; and then the only 
relatives who came round Ramouna were her father’s 
kindred. They had not ventured to claim affinity while 
her mother lived ; and they did so now by attentions and 
caresses to her son. This opened to them at once 
Ramouna’s heart and doors. Meanwhile the English 
nurse — who, in spite of all that could render her abode 
odious to her, had, from strong love to her charge, 
stoutly maintained her post — died, a few weeks after 
Ramouna’s mother, and no healthful influence remained 
to counteract those baneful ones to which the heir of the 
honest old Caxtons was subject. But Roland returned 


* A Spaniard very rarely indeed marries a Gitano, or female 
^-ipsy. But occasionally (observes Mr. Borrow) a wealthy Gitano 
marries a Spanish female. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


241 


home in a humor to be pleased with all things. Joyously 
he clasped his wife to his breast, and thought, with self- 
reproach, that he had forborne too little, and exacted too 
much — he would be wiser now. Delightedly he acknow-* 
lodged the beauty, the intelligence, and manly bearing of 
the boy, who played with his sword-knot, and ran off with 
his pistols as a prize. 

The news of the Englishman’s arrival at first kept the 
lawdess kinsfolk from the house ; but they were fond of 
the boy, and the boy of them, and interviews between 
him and these wild comrades, if stolen, were not less 
frequent. Gradually Roland’s eyes became opened. As, 
in habitual intercourse, the boy abandoned the reserve 
which awe and cunning at first imposed, Roland was 
inexpressibly shocked at the bold principles his son 
affected, and at his utter incapacity even to comprehend 
that plain honesty and that frank honor which, to the 
English soldier, seemed ideas innate and heaven-planted. 
Soon afterwards, Roland found that a system of plunder 
was carried on in his household, and tracked it to the 
connivance of the wife and the agency of his son, for the 
benefit of lazy bravos and dissolute vagrants. A more 
patient man than Roland might well have been exaspe- 
rated — a more wary man -confounded by this discovery. 
He took the natural step — perhaps insisting on it too 
summarily — perhaps not allowing enough for the uncul- 
tured mind and lively passions of his wife — he ordered 
her instantly to prepare to accompany him from the place, 
and to abandon all commun’cation with her kindred. 

II.— 21 Q 


242 


THE CAXTONS: 


A vehement refusal ensued ; but Roland was not a man 
to give up such a point, and at length a false submission, 
and a feigned repentance, soothed his resentment and 
obtained his pardon. They moved several miles from the 
place ; but where they moved, there, some at least, and 
those the worst of the baleful brood, stealthily followed. 
Whatever Ramouna’s earlier love for Roland had been, 
it had evidently long ceased, in the thorough want of 
sympathy between them, and in that absence which, if it 
renews a strong affection, destroys an affection already 
weakened. But the mother and son adored each other 
with all the strength of their strong, wild natures. Even 
under ordinary circumstances, the father’s influence over 
a boy yet in childhood is exerted in vain, if the mother 
lend herself to baffle it. And in this miserable position, 
what chance had the blunt, stern, honest Roland (sepa- 
rated from his son during the most ductile years of 
infancy), against the ascendency of a mother who humored 
all the faults, and gratified all the wishes, of her darling ? 

In his despair, Roland let fall the threat that, if thus 
thwarted, it would become his duty to withdraw his son 
from the mother. This threat instantly hardened both 
hearts against him. The wife represented Roland to tho 
boy as a tyrant, as an enemy — . as one who had destroyed 
all the happiness they had before enjoyed in each other — 
as one who33 severity showed that he hated his own child ; 
and the boy believed her. In his own house a firm union 
was formed against Roland, and protected by the cunning 
which is the force of the weak against the strong. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


243 


In spite of all, Roland could never forget the tender- 
ness with which the young nurse had watched over the 
wounded man, nor the love — genuine for the hour, though 
not drawn from the feelings which withstand the wear and 
tear of life — that lips so beautiful had pledged him in the 
by-gone days. These thoughts must have come perpetu- 
ally between his feelings and his judgment, to embitter 
still more his position- — to harass still more his heart. 
And if, by the strength of that sense of duty which made 
the force of his character, he could have strung himself 
to the fulfilment of the threat ; humanity, at all events, 
compelled him to delay it — his wife promised to be again 
a mother. Blanche was born. How could he take the 
infant from the mother’s breast, or abandon the daughter 
to the fatal influences from which only, by so violent an 
effort, he could free the son ? 

No wonder, poor Roland, that those deep furrows 
contracted thy bold front, and thy hair grew grey before 
its time. 

Fortunately, perhaps, for all parties, Roland’s wife died 
while Blanche was still an infant. She was taken ill of a 
fever — she died delirious, clasping her boy to her breast, 
and praying the saints to protect him from his cruel 
father. How often that death-bed haunted the son, and 
justified his belief that there was no parent’s love in the 
heart which was now his sole shelter from the world, and 
the “pelting of its pitiless rain.” Again I say, poor 
Roland I for I know that, in that harsh, unloving dis- 
rupture of such solemn ties, thy large, generous heart 


244 


THE OAXTONS: 


forgot its wrongs ; again didst tliou see tender eyes bend- 
ing over the wounded stranger — again hear low murmurs 
breathe the warm weakness which the women of the south 
deem it no shame to own. And now did it all end in 
those ravings of hate, and in that glazing gaze of terror I 


CHAPTER IT. 

THE PRECEPTOR. 

Roland removed to France, and fixed his abode in 
the environs of Paris. He placed Blanche at a convent 
in the immediate neighborhood, going to see her daily, 
and gave himself up to the education of his son. The 
boy was apt to learn, but to unlearn was here the arduous 
task — and for that task it would have needed either the 
passionless experience, the exquisite forbearance of a 
practised teacher, or the love and confidence, and yield- 
ing heart of a believing pupil. Roland felt that he was 
not the man to be the teacher, and that his son’s heart 
remained obstinately closed to him. He looked round, 
and found at the other side of Paris what seemed a 
suitable preceptor — a young Frenchman of some dis- 
tinction in letters, more especially in science, with all a 
Frenchman’s eloquence of talk, full of high-sounding 
sentiments that pleased the romantic enthusiasm of the 
Captain ; so Roland, with sanguine hopes, confided his 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


245 


son to this man’s care. The boy’s natural quickness 
mastered readily all that pleased his taste ; he learned to 
speak and write French with rare felicity and precision. 
Ilis tenacious memory, and those flexile organs in which 
the talent for languages is placed, served, with the help 
of an English master, to revive his earlier knowledge of 
his father’s tongue, and to enable him to speak it with 
fluent correctness — though there was always in his ac- 
cent something which had struck me as strange ; but not 
suspecting it to be foreign, I had thought it a theatrical 
affectation. He did not go far into science — little 
farther, perhaps, than a smattering of French mathe- 
matics; but he acquired a remarkable facility and 
promptitude in calculation. He devoured eagerly the 
light reading thrown in his way, and picked np thence 
that kind of knowledge which novels and plays afford, for 
good or evil, according as the novel or the play elevates 
the understanding and ennobles the passions, or merely 
corrupts the fancy, and lowers the standard of human 
nqture. But of all that Roland desired him to be taught, 
the son remained as ignorant as before. Among the 
other misfortunes of this ominous marriage, Roland’s 
wife had possessed all the superstitions of a Roman 
Catholic Spaniard, and with these the boy had uncon- 
sciously intermingled doctrines far more dreary, imbibed 
from the dark paganism of the Gitanos. 

Roland had sought a Protestant for his son’s tutor. 
The preceptor was nominally a Protestant — a biting 
derider of all superstitions, indeed I He was such a Pro- 


THE CAXTONS: 


testant as some defenc^er of Voltaire’s religion says the 
Great Wit would have befen had he lived in a Protestant 
country. The Frenchman laughed the boy out of his 
superstitions, to leave behind them the sneering scepti- 
cisms of the EiicyclopSdie, without those redeeming 
ethics on which all sects of philosophy are agreed, but 
which, unhappily, it requires a philosopher to comprehend. 

This preceptor was, doubtless, not aware of the mis- 
chief he was doing ; and for the rest, he taught his pupil 
after his own system — a mild and plausible one, very 
much like the system we at home are recommended to 
adopt — “ Teach the understanding, — all else will follow ; ” 
“Learn to read something, and it will all come right;” 
“ Follow the bias of the pupil’s mind ; thus you develop 
genius, not thwart it.” Mind, understanding, genius ^ — 
fine things I But, to educate the whole man, you must 
educate something more than these. Not for want of 
mind, understanding, genius, have Borgias and Neros left 
their names as monuments of horror to mankind. Where, 
in all this teaching, was one lesson to warm the heart and 
guide the soul ? 

Oh, mother mine ! that the boy had stood by thy knee, 
and heard from thy lips why life was given us, in what life 
shall end, and how heaven stands open to us night and day 1 
Oh, father mine I that thou hadst been his preceptor, not 
in book-learning, but the heart’s simple wisdom ! Oh that 
he had learned from thee, in parables closed with practice, 
the happiness of self-sacrifice, and how “good deeds should 
repair the bad 1 ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE 


247 


It was the misfortune of this boy, with his daring and 
his beauty, that there was in his exterior and his manner 
that which attracted indulgent interest, and a sort of 
compassionate admiration. The Frenchman liked him — 
believed his story — thought him ill-treated by that hard- 
visaged English soldier. All English people were so dis- 
agreeable, particularly English soldiers ; and the Captain 
once mortally offended the Frenchman by calling Yilainton 
un grand homme, and denying with brutal indignation, 
that the English had poisoned Napoleon 1 So, instead 
of teaching the son to love and revere his father, the 
Frenchman shrugged his shoulders when the boy broke 
into some unfilial complaint, and at most said, Mats, 
cJier enfant, ton p^re est Anglais, — c'est tout dire.''' 
Meanwhile, as the child sprang rapidly into precocious 
youth, he was permitted a liberty in his hours of leisure 
of which he availed himself with all the zest of his earlier 
habits and adventurous temper. He formed acquaintances 
among the loose young haunters of cafis and spendthrifts 
of that capital — the wits I He became an excellent 
swordsman and pistol-shot — adroit in all games in which 
skill helps fortune. He learned betimes to furnish him- 
self with money, by the cards and the billiard-balls. 

But, delighted with the easy home he had obtained, he 
took care to school his features and smooth his manner in 
his father’s visits — to make the most of what he had 
learned of less ignoble knowledge, and, with his charac- 
teristic imitativeness, to cite the finest sentiments he had 
^ound in his piays and novels. What father is not credu- 


248 


THE CAXTONS: 


/ous ? Roland believed, and wept tears of joy. And 
now he thought the time was come to take back the boy 
— to return with a worthy heir to the old Tower. He 
thanked and blessed the tutor — he took the son. But, 
under pretence that he had yet some things to master, 
whether in book knowledge or manly accomplishments, 
the youth begged his father, at all events, not yet to re- 
turn to England — to let him attend his tutor daily for 
some months. Roland consented, moved from his old 
quarters, and took a lodging for both in the same suburb 
as that in which the teacher resided. But soon, when 
they were under one roof, the boy’s habitual tastes, and 
his repugnance to all paternal authority, were betrayed 
To do my unhappy cousin justice (such as that justice is), 
though he had the cunning for a short disguise, he had 
not the hypocrisy to maintain systematic deceit. He 
could play a part for a while, from an exulting joy in his 
own address ; but he could not wear a mask with the 
patience of cold-blooded dissimulation. Why enter into 
painful details, so easily divined by the intelligent reader ? 
The faults of the son were precisely those to which Roland 
would be least indulgent. To the ordinary scrapes of 
high-spirited boyhood, no father, I am sure, would have 
been more lenient ; but to anything that seemed low, 
petty — that grated on him as a gentleman and soldier — 
there, not for worlds would I have braved the darkness 
of his frown, and the woe that spoke like scorn in his 
voice. And when, after all warning and prohibition were 
U' vain, Roland found his son, in the middle of the nighi, 


A FAMxLY PICTURE. 


24a 


5n a resort of gamblers and sharpers, carrying all before 
him with his cue, in the full flush of triumph, and a great 
heap of five-franc pieces before him, you may conceive 
with w’hat wrath the proud, hasty, passionate man drove 
out, cane in hand, the obscene associates, flinging after 
them the son’s ill-gotten gains ; and with what resentful 
humiliation the son was compelled to follow the father 
home. Then Roland took the boy to England, but not 
to the old Tower ; that hearth of his ancestors was still 
too sacred for the footsteps of the vagrant heir I 


CHAPTER Y. 

THE HEARTH WITHOUT TRUST, AND THE WORLD WITHOUT 
A GUIDE. 

And then, vainly grasping at every argument his blunt 
sense could suggest — then talked Roland much and 
grandly of the duties men owed — even if they threw off 
all love to their father — still to their father’s name ; and 
then his pride, always so lively, grew irritable and harsh, 
and seemed, no doubt, to the perverted ears of the son, 
unlovely and unloving. And that pride, without serving 
one purpose of good, did yet more mischief ; for the youth 
caught the disease, but in a wrong way. And he said to 
himself — 

“ Ho, then my father is a great man, with all these an- 


250 


THE CAXTONS: 


cestors and big words 1 And he has lands and a castle 

— and yet how miserably we live, and how he stints me I 
But, if he has cause for pride in all these dead men, why, 
so have 1. And are these lodgings, these appurtenances, 
fit for the ‘ gentleman ^ he says I am ? ” 

Even in England, the gipsy blood broke out as before, 
and the youth found vagrant associates. Heaven knows 
how or where ; and strange-looking forms, gaudily shabby 
and disreputably smart, were seen lurking in the corner 
of the street, or peering in at the window, slinking off if 
they saw Boland — and Roland could not stoop to be a 
spy. And the son’s heart grew harder and harder against 
his father, and his father’s face now never smiled on him. 
Then bills came in, and duns knocked at the door. Bills 
and duns to a man who shrank from the thought of a debt 
as an ermine from a spot on its fur I And the son’s short 
answer to remonstrance was, — “ Am I not a gentleman ? 

— these are the things gentlemen require. ” Then perhaps 
Roland remembered the experiment of his French friend, 
and left his bureau unlocked, and said, “ Ruin me if you 
will, but no debts. There is money in those drawers — 
they are unlocked.” That trust would for ever have 
cured o£ extravagance a youth with a high and delicate 
sense of honor : the pupil of the Gita nos did not under- 
stand the trust ; he thought it conveyed a natural, though 
ungracious permission to take out what he wanted— and 
he took I To Roland this seemed a theft, and a theft of 
the coarsest kind : but when he so said, the son started 
indignant, and saw in that which had been so touching an 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


251 


. appeal to his honor, but a trap to decoy him into dis- 
grace. In short, neither could understand the other. 
Roland forbade his* son to stir from the house ; and the 
young man the same night let himself out, and stole 
forth into the wide world, to enjoy or defy it in his own 
wild way. 

It would be tedious to follow him through his various 
adventures and experiments on fortune (even if I knew 
them all, which I do not). And now putting altogether 
aside his right name, which he had voluntarily abandoned, 
and not embarrassing the reader with the earlier aliases 
assumed, I shall give to my unfortunate kinsman the name 
by which I first knew him, and continue to do so until — 
Heaven grant the time may come I — having first re- 
deemed, he may reclaim, his own. It was in joining a 
set of strolling players that Yivian became acquainted 
with Peacock ; and that worthy, who had many strings 
to his bow, soon grew aware of Yivian’s extraordinary 
skill with the cue, and saw therein a better mode of 
making their joint fortunes than the boards of an itinerani 
Thespis furnished to either. Yivian listened to him, and 
it wms while their intimacy was most fresh that I met 
them on the high-road. That chance meeting produced 
(if I may be allowed to believe his assurance) a strong, 
and, for the moment, a salutary effect upon Yivian. The 
comparative innocence and freshness of a boy’s mind were 
new to him ; the elastic healthful spirits with which those 
gifts were accompanied startled him, by the contrast to 
his own forced gaiety and secret gloom. And this boy 
jvas his own cousin 1 


252 


THE CAXTONS: 


Coming afterwards to London, he adventured inquiry • 
at the hotel in the Strand at which I had given my ad- 
dress ; learned where we were ; an3 passing one night 
into the street, saw my uncle at the window — to recognise 
and to fly from him. Having then some money at his 
disposal, he broke off abruptly from the set in which he 
had been thrown. He had resolved to return to France 
— he would try for a more respectable mode of existence. 
He had not found happiness in that liberty he had won, 
nor room for the ambition that began to gnaw him, in 
those pursuits from which his father had vainly warned 
him. His most reputable friend was his old tutor ; he 
would go to him. He went; but the tutor was now 
married, and was himself a father, and that made a 
wonderful alteration in his practical ethics. It was no 
longer moral to aid the son in rebellion, to his father. 
Yivian evinced his usual sarcastic haughtiness at the 
reception he met, and was requested civilly to leave the 
house. Then again he flung himself on his wits at Paris. 
But there were plenty of wits there sharper than his own. 
He got into some quarrel with the police — not, indeed, 
for any dishonest practices of his own, but from an un- 
wary acquaintance with others less scrupulous, and deemed 
it prudent to quit France. Thus had I met him again, 
forlorn and ragged, in the streets of London. 

Meanwhile Roland, after the first vain search; had 
yielded to the indignation and disgust that had long 
rankled within him. His son had thrown off his au- 
thority, because it preserved him from dishonor. His 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


253 


iaoas of discipline were stern, and patience had been well- 
nigh crushed out of his heart. He thought he could 
bear to resign his son to his fate — to disown him, and to 
say, “ I have no more a son.” It was in this mood that 
he had first visited our house. But when, on that memor- 
able night in which he had narrated to his thrilling 
listeners the dark tale of a fellow-sufferer’s woe and crime 
— betraying in the tale, to my father’s quick sympathy, 
his own sorrow and passion — it did not need much of 
his gentler brother’s subtle art to learn or guess the 
whole, nor much of Austin’s mild persuasion to convince 
Roland that he had not yet exhausted all efforts to track 
the wanderer and reclaim the erring child. Then he had 
gone to London — then he had sought every spot which 
the outcast would probably haunt — then had he saved 
and pinched from his own necessities to have wherewithal 
to enter theatres and gaming-houses, and fee the agencies 
of police ; then had he seen the form for which he had 
watched and pined, in the streets below his window, and 
cried, in a joyous delusion, “ He repents ! ” One day a 
letter reached my uncle, through his banker’s, from the 
French tutor (who knew of no other means of tracing 
Roland but through the house by which his salary had 
been paid), informing him of his son’s visit. Roland 
started instantly for Paris. Arriving there, he could 
only learn of his son through the police, and from them 
only learn that he had been seen in the company of ac- 
complished swindlers, who were already in the hands of 
justice ; but that the youth himself, whom there was 
II —22 


254 


THE CAXTONS: 


nothing to criminate, had been suffered to quit Paris, and 
had taken, it was supposed, the road to England. Then, 
at last, the poor Captain’s stout heart gave way. His 
son the companion of swindlers I — could he be sure that 
he was not their accomplice ? If not yet, how small the 
step between companionship and participation ? He 
took the child left him still from the convent, returned to 
England, and arrived there to be seized with fever and 
delirium — apparently on the same day (or day before 
that on which) the son had dropped, shelterless and 
penniless, on the stones of London. 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE ATTEMPT TO BUILD A TEMPLE OF FORTUNE OUT OP 
THE RUINS OF HOME. 

“But,” said Vivian, pursuing his tale, “but when you 
came to my aid, not knowing me — when you relieved me 

— when from your own lips, for the first time, I heard 
words that praised me, and for qualities that implied I 
might yet be ‘worth much’ — Ah I (he added mournfully) 
I remember the very words — a new light broke upon me 

— struggling and dim, but light still. The ambition with 
which I had sought the truckling Frenchman revived, and 
took worthier and more definite form. I would lift myself 
a])ove the mire, make a name, rise in life ! ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


255 


Tivian’s head drooped, but he raised it quickly, and 
laughed — his low, mocking laugh. What follows of this 
tale may be told succinctly. Retaining his bitter feelings 
towards his father, he resolred to continue his incognito 
— he gave himself a name likely to mislead conjecture, 
if I conversed of him to my family, since he knew that 
Roland was aware that a Colonel Yivian had been af- 
flicted by a runaway son — and, indeed, the talk upon that 
subject had first put the notion of flight into his own head. 
He caught at the idea of becoming known to Trevanion ; 
but he saw reasons to forbid his being indebted to me for 
the introduction — to forbid my knowing where he was: 
sooner or later that knowledge could scarcely fail to end 
in the discovery of his real name. Fortunately, as he 
deemed, for the plans he began to meditate, we were all 
leaving London — he should have the stage to himself. 
And then boldly he resolved upon what he regarded as the 
master-scheme of life — viz., to obtain a small pecuniary 
independence, and to emancipate himself formally and 
entirely from his father’s control. Aware of poor Roland’s 
chivalrous reverence for his name, firmly persuaded that 
Roland had no love for the son, but only the dread that 
the son might disgrace him, he determined to avail 
himself of his father’s prejudices in order to effect his 
jmrpose. 

He wrote a short letter to Roland (that letter which 
had given the poor man so sanguine a joy — that letter 
after reading which he had said to Blanche, “ pray for 
me stating simply that he wished to see his father j 
and naming a tavern in the City for the meeting. 


256 


THE CAXTONS: 


The interview took place. And when Roland, love and 
forgiveness in his heart, — but (who shall blame him ?) 
dignity on his brow and rebuke in his eye — approached, 
ready at a word to fling himself on the boy’s breast, 
Vivian, seeing only the outer signs, and interpreting them 
by his own sentiments — recoiled, folded his arms on his 
bosom, and said coldly, “Spare me reproach, sir — it is 
unavailing. I seek you only to propose that you shall 
save your name and resign your son.” 

Then, intent perhaps but to gain the object, the 
unhappy youth declared his fixed determination never to 
live with his father, never to acquiesce in his authority, 
resolutely to pursue his own career, whatever that career 
might be, explaining none of the circumstances that ap- 
peared most in his disfavor — rather, perhaps, thinking 
that, the worse his father judged of him, the more chance 
he had to achieve his purpose. “ All I ask of you,” he 
said, “ is this : Give me the least you can afford to pre- 
serve me from the temptation to rob, or the necessity to 
starve ; and I, in my turn, promise never to molest you 
in life — never to degrade you in my death ; whatever my 
misdeeds, they will never reflect on yourself, for you shall 
never recognise the misdoer I The name you prize so 
highly shall be spared.” Sickened and revolted, Roland 
attempted no argument — there was that in the son’s cold 
manner which shut out hope, and against which his pride 
rose indignant. A meeker man might have remonstrated, 
implored, and wept — that was not in Roland’s nature. 
He liad but the choice of three evils, to say to his son ; 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


251 


“ Fool, I command thee to follow me I ” or say, ‘^Wretch, 
since thou wouldst cast me off as a stranger, as a stranger 
I say to thee — Go, starve or rob as thou wilt ? ” or 
lastly, to bow his proud head, stunned by the blow, and 
say, “ Thou refusest me the obedience of the son, thou 
dnmandest to be as the dead to me. I can control thee 
not from vice, I can guide thee not to virtue. Thou 
wouldst sell me the name I have inherited stainless, and 
have as stainless borne. Be it so I — Name thy price I ” 
And something like this last was the father’s choice. 
He listened, and was long silent ; and then he said 
slowly, “Pause before you decide.” 

“I have paused long — my decision is made I this is 
the last time we meet. I see before me now the way to 
fortune, fairly, honorably ; you can aid me in it only in 
the way I have said. Reject me now, and the option 
may never come again to either I ” 

And then Roland said to himself, “I have spared and 
saved for this son ; what care I for aught else than 
enough to live without debt, creep into a comer, and 
await the grave 1 And the more I can give, why, the 
better chance that he will abjure the vile associate and 
the desperate course.” And so, out of his small income, 
Roland surrendered to the rebel child more than the half. 

Yivian was not aware of his father’s fortune — he did 
not suppose the sum of two hundred pounds a year was 
an allowance so disproportioned to Roland’s means — 
yet when it was named, even he was struck by the 
generosity of one to whom he himself had given the right 
22 * 


B 


258 


THE CAXTONS: 


to say, “ I take thee at thy word ; ^ just enough not to 
starve 1 ’ 

But theu that hateful cynicism which, caught from bad 
men and evil books, he called knowledge of the world,” 
made him think “ it is not for me, it is only for his name 
and he said aloud, “ I accept these terms, sir ; here is the 
address of a solicitor with whom yours can settle them. 
Farewell for ever.” 

At these last words K oland started, and stretched out 
his arms vaguely like a blind man. But Vivian had 
already thrown open the window (the room was on the 
ground floor) and sprang upon the sill. “ Farewell,” he 
repeated : “tell the world I am dead.” 

He leapt into the street, and the father drew in the 
out-stretched arms, smote his heart, and said — “Well, 
then, my task in the world of man is over I I will back 
to the old ruin — the wreck to the wrecks — and the sight 
of tombs I have at least rescued from dishonor shall com- 
fort me for all I” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


259 


CHAPTER VII. 

I HE RESULTS — PERVERTED AMBITION — SELFISH PASSION 

THE INTELLECT DISTORTED BY THE CROOKEDNESS Of 

THE HEART. 

Vivian’s schemes thus prospered. He had an income 
that permitted him the outward appearances of a gentle- 
man — an independence, modest indeed, but independence 
still. We were all gone from London. One letter to 
me with the post-mark of the town near which Colonel 
Vivian lived, sufl&ced to confirm my belief in his parentage, 
and in his return to his friends. He then presented him- 
self to Trevanion as the young man whose pen I had 
employed in the member’s service ; and knowing that I 
had never mentioned his name to Trevanion — for, with- 
out Vivian’s permission, I should not, considering his 
apparent trust in me, have deemed myself authorised to 
do so — he took that of Gower, which he selected, 
haphazard, from an old Court Guide, as having the ad- 
vantage — in common with most names borne by the 
higher nobility of England — of not being confined, as 
the ancient names of untitled gentlemen usually are, to 
the members of a single family. And when, with his 
wonted adaptability and suppleness, he had contrived to 


260 


THE OAXTONS: 


lay aside, or smooth over, whatever in his manners would 
be calculated to displease Trevanion, and had succeeded 
in exciting the interest which that generous statesman 
always conceived for ability, he owned, candidly, one 
day, in the presence of Lady Ellinor — for his experience 
bad taught him the comparative ease with which the 
sympathy of woman is enlisted in anything that appeals 
to the imagination, or seems out of the ordinary beat of 
life — that he had reasons for concealing his connections 
for the present — that he had cause to believe I suspected 
what they were, and, from mistaken regard for his 
welfare, might acquaint his relations with his whereabout. 
He therefore begged Trevanion, if the latter had occasion 
to write to me, not to mention him. This promise Tre- 
vanion gave, though reluctantly ; for the confidence 
volunteered to him seemed to exact the promise ; but as 
he detested mystery of all kinds, the avowal might ha ve 
been fatal to any farther acquaintance ; and under auspices 
so doubtful, there would have been no chance of his 
obtaining that intimacy in Trevanion’s house which he 
desired to establish, but for an accident which at once 
opened that house to him almost as a home. 

Yivian had always treasured a lock of his mother’s 
hair, cut off on her death-bed ; and when he was at his 
French tutor’s, his first pocket-money had been devoted 
to the purchase of a locket, on which he had caused to 
oe inscribed his own name and his mother’s. Through 
all his wanderings, he had worn this relic : and in the 
direst pangs of want, no hunger had been keen enough 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


261 


to induce him to part with it. Now, one morning the 
ribbon that suspended the locket gave way, and his eye 
resting on the names inscribed on the gold, he thought, 
in his own vague sense of right, imperfect as it was, that 
his compact with his father obliged him to have the 
names erased. He took it to a jeweller in Piccadilly for 
that purpose, and gave the requisite order, not taking 
notice of a lady in the further part of the shop. The 
locket was still on the counter after Yivian had left, when 
the lady coming forward observed it, and saw the names 
on the surface. She had been struck by the peculiar tone 
of the voice, which she had heard before ; and that very 
day Mr. Gower received a note from Lady Ellinor Tre- 
vanion, requesting to see him. Much wondering, he 
went. Presenting him with the locket, she said smiling, 
“ There is only one gentleman in the world who calls 
himself De Caxton, unless it be his son. Ah 1 I see now 
why you wished to conceal yourself from my friend 
Pisistratus. But how is this ? can you have any differ- 
ence with your father ? Confide in me, or it is my duty 
to write to him.” 

Even Vivian’s powers of dissimulation abandoned him, 
thus taken by surprise. He saw no alternative but to 
trust Lady Ellinor with his secret, and implore her to 
respect it. And then he spoke bitterly of his father’s 
dislike to him, and his own resolution to prove the in- 
justice of that dislike by the position he would himself 
establish in the world. At present, his father believed 

aim dead, and perhaps was not ill-pleased to think so. 

2q 


262 


THE CAXTONS: 


He would not dispel that belief, till he could redeem anj 
boyish errors, and force his family to be proud to 
acknowledge him. 

Though Lady Ellinor was slow to believe that Roland 
could dislike his son,' she could yet readily believe that 
he was harsh and choleric, with a soldier’s high notions 
of discipline : the young man’s story moved her, his 
determination pleased her own high spirit ; always with 
a touch of romance in her, and always sympathising with 
each desire of ambition, she entered into Yivian’s aspira- 
tions with an alacrity that surprised himself. She was 
charmed with the idea of ministering to the son’s fortunes, 
and ultimately reconciling him to the father, — through 
her own agency ; — it would atone for any fault of which 
Roland could accuse herself in the old time. 

She undertook to impart the secret to Trevanion, for 
she would have no secrets from him, and to secure his 
acquiescence in its concealment from all others. 

And here I must a little digress from the chronological 
course of my explanatory narrative, to inform the reader 
that, when Lady Ellinor had her interview with Roland, 
she had been repelled by the sternness of his manner 
from divulging Yivian’s secret. But on her first attempt 
to sound or conciliate him, she had begun with some 
eulogies on Trevanion’s new friend and assistant, Mr. 
Gower, and had awakened Roland’s suspicions of that 
person’s identity with his son — suspicions which had 
given him a terrible interest in our joint deliverance of 
Miss Trevanion. But so heroically had the poor soldier 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


263 


sought to resist his own fears, that on the way he shrank 
to put to me the questions that might paralyse the 
energies which, whatever the answer, were then so much 
needed. “ For,” said he to my father, “ I felt the blood 
surging to my temples ; and if I had said to Pisistratus, 

‘ Describe this man,’ and by his description I had 
recognised my son, and dreaded lest I might be too late 
to arrest him from so treacherous a crime, my brain would 
have given way ; — and so I did not dare 1 ” 

T return to the thread of my story. From the time 
that Yivian confided in Lady Ellinor, the way was cleared 
to his most ambitious hopes ; and though his acquisitions 
were not sufficiently scholastic and various to permit 
Trevanion to select him as a secretary, yet, short of 
sleeping at the house, he was little less intimate there than 
I had been. 

Among Vivian’s schemes of advancement, that of 
winning the hand and heart of the great heiress had not 
been one of the least sanguine. This hope was annulled 
when, not long after his intimacy at her father’s house, 
she became engaged to young Lord Castleton. But he 
could not see Miss Trevanion with impunity — (alas I who, 
with a heart yet free, could be insensible to attractions so 
winning ?) He permitted the love — such love as his 
wild, half-educated, half-savage nature acknowledged — 
to creep into his soul — to master it ; but he felt no hope, 
cherished no scheme while the young lord lived. With 
the death of her betrothed, Fanny was free; then he 
began to hope — not yet to scheme. Accidentally he 


264 


THE C AXTONS : 


encuuntered Peacock — partly from the levity that accom- 
panied a false good-nature that was constitutional with 
him, partly from a vague idea that the man might be 
useful, Yivian established his quondam associate in the 
service of Trevanion. Peacock soon gained the secret 
of Y ivian’s love for Fanny, and, dazzled by the advantages 
that a marriage with Miss Trevanion would confer on his 
patron, and might reflect on himself, and delighted at an 
occasion to exercise his dramatic accomplishments on the 
stage of real life, he soon practised the lesson that the 
theatres had taught him — viz. "to make a sub-intrigue 
between maid and valet serve the schemes and insure the 
success of the lover. If Yivian had some opportunities 
to imply his admiration. Miss Trevanion gave him none 
to plead his cause. But the softness of her nature, and 
that graceful kindness which surrounded her like an 
atmosphere, emanating unconsciously from a girl’s harm- 
less desire to please, tended to deceive him. His own 
personal gifts were so rare, and, in his wandering life, the 
effect they had produced had so increased his reliance on 
them, that he thought he wanted but the fair opportunity 
to woo in order to win. In this state of mental intoxica- 
tion, Trevanion having provided for his Scotch secretary, 

toi.k him to Lord N ’s. His hostess was one of those 

middle-aged ladies of fashion, who like to patronise and 
bring forward young men, accepting gratitude for conde- 
scension, as a homage to beauty. She was struck by 
Yivian’s exterior, and that “picturesque” in look and in 
manner which belonged to him. Naturally garrulous and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 265 

indiscreet, she was unreserved to a pupil whom she con- 
ceived the whim to make au fait to society.” Thus she 
talked to him among other topics in fashion, of Miss 
Trevanion, and expressed her belief that the present Lord 
Castleton had always admired her ; but it was only on 
his accession to the marquisate that he had made up his 
mind to marry, or, from his knowledge of Lady Ellinor’s 
ambition, thought that the Marquis of Castleton might 
achieve the prize which would have been refused to Sir 
Sedley Beaudesert. Then, to corroborate the predictions 
she hazarded, she repeated, perhaps with exaggeration, 
some passages from Lord Castleton’s replies to her own 
suggestions on the subject. Vivian’s alarm became fatally 
excited ; unregulated passions easily obscured a reason 
so long perverted, and a conscience so habitually dulled. 
There is an instinct in all intense affection (whether it be 
corrupt or pure) that usually makes its jealousy prophetic. 
Thus, from the first, out of all the brilliant idlers round 
Fanny Trevanion, my jealousy had pre-eminently fastened 
on Sir Sedley Beaudesert, though, to all seeming, without 
a cause. From the same instinct, Vivian had conceived 
the same vague jealousy — a jealousy, in his instance, 
coupled v/ith a deep dislike to his supposed rival, who 
had wounded his self-love. For the marquis, though to 
be haughty or ill-bred was impossible to the blandness 
of his nature, had never shown to Vivian the, genial 
courtesies he had lavished upon me, and kept politely 
aloof from his acquaintance — while Vivian’s personal 
eanity had been wounded by that drawing-room effect 
TI. — 23 


266 


THE CAXTONS: 


which the proverbial winner of all hearts produced with- 
out an effort — an effect that threw into the shade the 
youth and the beaaty (more striking, but infinitely less 
prepossessing) of the adventurous rival. Thus animosity 
to Lord Castleton conspired with Vivian’s passion for 
Fanny to rouse all that was worst by nature and by 
rearing in this audacious and turbulent spirit. 

His confidant Peacock suggested, from his stage ex-* 
perience, the outlines of a plot, to which Vivian’s astuter 
intellect instantly gave tangibility and coloring. Peacock 
had already found Miss Trevanion’s waiting-woman ripe 
for any measure that might secure himself as her husband, 
and a provision for life as a reward. Two or three 
letters between them settled the preliminary engagements. 
A friend of the ex-comedian’s had lately taken an inn on 
the north road, and might be relied upon. At that inn 
it was settled that Vivian should meet Miss Trevanion, 
whom Peacock, by the aid of the abigail, engaged to lure 
there. The sole difficulty that then remained would, to 
most men, have seemed the greatest — viz., the consent 
of Miss Trevanion to a Scotch marriage. But Vivian 
hoped all things from his own eloquence, art, and passion ; 
and by an inconsistency, however strange, still not un- 
natural in the twists of so crooked an intellect, he thought 
that, by insisting on the intention of her parents to 
sacrifice her youth to the very man of whose attractions 
he was most jealous — by the picture of disparity of years, 
by the caricature of his rival’s foibles and frivolities, by 
the commonplaces of “beauty bartered for ambition/ 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


267 


&c., he m^ght enlist her fears of the alternative on the 
Bide of the choice urged upon her The plan proceeded, 
the time came : Peacock pretended the excuse of a sick 
relation to leave Trevanion ; and Vivian, a day before, 
on pretence of visiting the picturesque scenes in the 
neighborhood, obtained leave of absence. Thus the plot 
went on to its catastrophe. 

“ And I need not ask,” said I, trying in vain to conceal 
my indignation, “how Miss Trevanion received your 
monstrous proposition I ” 

Vivian’s pale cheek grew paler, but he made no reply. 

“And if we had not arrived, what would you have 
done I Oh, dare you look into the gulf of infamy you 
have escaped I ” 

“ I cannot, and I will not bear this I ” exclaimed 
Vivian, starting up. “ I have laid my heart bare before 
you, and it is ungenerous and unmanly thus to press upon 
its wounds. You can moralise, you can speak coldly — 
but — I — I loved I ” 

“And do you think,” I burst forth, — “do you think 
that I did not love too I — love longer than you have 
done ; better than you have done ; gone through sharper 
struggles, darker days, more sleepless nights than you,— 
and yet — ” 

Vivian caught hold of me. 

“ Hush ! ” he cried ; “ is this indeed true I I thought 
you might have had some faint and fleeting fancy for 
Miss Trevanion. but that you curbed and conquered it at 
once. Oh no ! it was impossible to have loved really, 
and to have surrendered all chance as you did I — have 


268 


THE CAXTONS : 


left the house, have fled from her presence I No — no 1 
that was not love I ” 

“ It was love I and I pray Heaven to grant that, one 
day, you may know how little your affection sprang from 
those feelings which make true love sublime as honor, and 
meek as is. religion I Oh 1 cousin, cousin — with those 
rare gifts, what you might have been I what, if you will 
pass through repentance, and cling to atonement — what, 
T dare hope, you may yet be. Talk not now of your 
love ; I talk not of mine I Love is a thing gone from the 
lives of both. Go back to earlier thoughts, to heavier 
wrongs 1 — your father I — that noble heart which you 
have so wantonly lacerated, which you have so little com- 
prehended 1 ” 

Then with all the warmth of emotion I hurried on — 
showed him the true nature of honor and of Roland (for 
the names were one) ! — showed him the watch, the hope, 
the manly anguish I had witnessed, and wept — I, not 
his son : — to see ; showed him the poverty and privation 
to which the father, even at the last, had condemned 
himself, so that the son might have no excuse for the 
sins that Want whispers to the weak. This, and much 
more, and I suppose with the pathos that belongs to all 
earnestness, I enforced, sentence after sentence — yielding 
to no interruption, over-mastering all dissent I driving in 
the truth, nail after nail, as it were, into the obdurate 
heart, that I constrained and grappled to. And at last, 
tlie dark, bitter, cynical nature gave way, and the young 
man fell sobbing at my feet, and cried aloud, “ Spare me, 
spare me 1 I see it all now I Wretch that I have been I 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


269 


CHAPTER YIII, 

On leaving Yivian, I did not presume to promise him 
Roland’s immediate pardon. I did not urge him to at- 
tempt to see his father. I felt the time was not come 
for either pardon or interview. I contented myself with 
the victory I had already gained. I judged it right that 
thought, solitude, and suffering, should imprint more 
deeply the lesson, and prepare the way to the steadfast 
resolution of reform. I left him seated by the stream, 
and with the promise to inform him at the small hostelry, 
where he took up his lodgings, how Roland struggled 
through his illness. 

On returning to the inn, I was uneasy to see how long 
a time had elapsed since I had left my uncle. But on 
coming into his room, to my surprise and relief, I found 
him up and dressed, and with a serene, though -fatigued, 
expression of countenance. He asked me no questions 
where I had been — perhaps from sympathy with my 
feelings in parting with Miss Trevanion — perhaps from 
conjecture that the indulgence of those feelings had not 
wholly engrossed my time. 

But he said simply, “I think I understood from you 
that you had sent for Austin — is it so ? ” 

23 * 


210 


THE CAXTONS: 


“ Y es, sir ! but I named * * *, as the nearest point to 
the Tower, for the place of meeting. ” 

“Then let us go hence forthwith — nay, I shall be 
better for the change. And here, there must be curiosity, 
conjecture — torture I ” — said he, locking his hands tightly 
together: “ order the horses at once I 
I left f,he room accordingly ; and while they were 
getting ready the horses, I ran to the place where I had 
left Yivian. He was still there, in the same attitude, 
covering his face with his hands, as if to shut out the 
sun. I told him hastily of Roland’s improvement, of our 
approaching departure, and asked him an address in 
London at which I could find him. He gave me as his 
direction the same lodging at which I had so often visited 
him. “ If there be no vacancy there for me,” said he, 
“I shall leave word where I am to be found. But I 
would gladly be where I was before — ” He did not 
finish the sentence. I pressed his hand, and left him. 


CHAPTER IX. 

Some days have elapsed : we are in London, my father 
with us and Roland has permitted Austin to tell me his 
tale, and receive through Austin all that Vivian’s narra- 
tive to me suggested, whether in extenuation of tne past, 
or in hope of redemption in the future. And Austin has 
inexpressibly soothed his brother. And Roland’s ordi- 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


nary roughness has gone, and his looks are meek, and his 
voice low. But he talks little, and smiles never. He 
asks me no questions; does not to me name his son, nor 
recur to the voyage to Australia, nor ask “ why it is put 
off; ” nor interest himself as before in preparations for it 
— he has no heart for anything. 

The voyage is put off till the next vessel sails, and I 
have seen Vivian twice or thrice, and the result of the 
interviews has disappointed and depressed me. It seems 
to me that much of the previous effect I had produced is 
already obliterated. At the very sight of the great 
Babel — the evidence of the ease, the luxury, the wealth, 
the pomp; the strife, the penury, the famine, and the 
rags, which the focus of civilization, in the disparities of 
old societies, inevitably gathers together — the fierce 
combative disposition seemed to awaken again ; the per- 
verted ambition, the hostility to the world ; the wrath, the 
scorn ; the war with man, and the rebellious murmur 
against Heaven. There was still the one redeeming 
point of repentance for his wrongs to his father — his 
heart was still softened there ; and, attendant on that 
softness, I hailed a principle more like that of honor than 
I had yet recognised in AHvian. He cancelled the agree- 
ment which had assured him of a provision at the cost of 
his father’s comforts. “ At least, there,” he said, “ I will 
injure him no more 1 ” 

But while, on this point, repentance seemed genuine, it 
was not so with regard to his conduct towards Miss Tre- 
v^anion. His gipsy nature, his loose associates, his ex- 


272 


THE CAXTONS: 


travagant French romances, his theatrical mode of look' 
ing upon love intrigues and stage plots, seemed all to 
rise between his intelligence and the due sense of the 
fraud and treachery he had practised. He seemed to feel 
more shame at the exposure than at the guilt; more 
despair at the failure of success than gratitude at escape 
from crime. In a word, the nature of a whole life was 
not to be remodelled at once — at least by an artificer 
so unskilled as I. 

After one of these interviews, I stole into the room 
where Austin sat with Roland, and, watching a season- 
able moment when Roland, shaking off his reverie, opened 
his Bible, and sat down to it, vnth each muscle in his 
face set, as I had seen it before, into iron resolution, I 
beckoned my father from the room. 

PisiSTRATUS. — I have again seen my cousin. I cannot 
make the way I wished. My dear father, you must see 
him. 

Mr. Caxton. — I ? — yes, assuredly, if I can be of any 
service. But will he listen to me ? 

PisiSTRATUS. — I think so. A young man 'will often 
respect in his elder, what he will resent as a presumption 
in his contemporary. 

Mr. Caxton. — It may be so : (then more thought- 
fully) but you describe this strange boy’s mind as a 
wreck I — in what part of the mouldering timbers can I 
fix the grappling-hook ? Here, it seems that most of 
the snpports on which we can best rely, when we would 
save another, fail us. Religion, honor, the associations 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


273 


of childhood, the bonds of home, filial obedience ^ even 
the intelligence of self-interest, in the philosophical sense 
of the word. And I, too ! — a mere book-man I My 
dear son I — I despair 1 

PisisTRATUS. — No, you do not despair — no, you must 
succeed ; for, if you do not, what is to become of Uncle 
Roland ? Do you not see his heart is fast breaking ! 

Mr. Caxton. — Get me my hat ; I will go. I will 
save this Ishmael — I will not leave him till he is saved ‘ 

Pisistratus (some minutes after, as they are walking 
towards Vivian’s lodging). — You ask me what support 
you are to cling to. A strong and a good one, sir. 

Mr. Caxton. — Ah I what is that ? 

Pisistratus. — Affection I there is a nature capable 
of strong affection at the core of this wild heart I He 
could love his mother; tears gush to his eyes at her 
name — he would have starved rather than part with the 
memorial of that love. It was his belief in his father’s 
indifference, or dislike, that hardened and embruted him 
— it is only when he hears how that father loved him, 
that I now melt his pride and curb his passions. You 
have affection to deal with ! — do you despair now ? 

My father turned on me those eyes so inexpressibly 
benign and mild, and replied softly, “No !” 

We reached the house ; and my father said, as we 
knocked at the door, “ If he is at home, leave me. This 
is a hard study to which you have set me ; I must work 
p,t it alone.” 


8 


274 


THE CAXTONS: 


/ 

Vivian was at home, and the door closed on his visitor 
My father stayed some hours. 

On returning home, to my great surprise I found Tre- 
vanion with my uncle. He had found us out — no easy 
matter, I should think. But a good impulse in Trevanion 
was not of that feeble kind which turns home at the sight 
of a difficulty. He had come to London on purpose to 
see and to thank us. 

1 did not think there had been so much of delicacy — 
of what I may call the “beauty of kindness” — in a man 
whom incessant business had rendered ordinarily blunt 
and abrupt. I hardly recognised the impatient Trevanion 
in the soothing, tender, subtle respect that rather implied 
thap spoke gratitude, and sought to insinuate what he 
owed to the unhappy father, without touching on his 
wrongs from the son. But of this kindness — which 
showed how Trevanion’s high nature of gentleman raised 
him aloof from that coarseness of thought which those 
absorbed wholly in practical affairs often contract — of 
this kindness, so noble and so touching, Roland seemed 
scarcely aware. He sat by the embers of the neglected 
fire, his hands grasping the arms of his elbow-chair, his 
head drooping on his bosom ; and only by a deep hectic 
flush on his dark cheek could you have seen that he dis- 
tinguished between an ordinary visitor and the man 
whose child he had helped to save. This minister of 
state — this high member of the elect, at whose gift are 
places, peerages, gold sticks, and ribbons — has nothing 
at his command for the bruised spirit of the half- pay 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 2'?d 

soldier. Before tliat poverty, that grief, and that i>ride, 
the King^s Counsellor was powerless. Only when Tre- 
vanion rose to depart, something like a sense of the 
soothing intention which the visit implied seemed to rouse 
the repose of the old man, and to break the ice at its 
surface ; for he followed Trevanion to the door, took 
both his hands, pressed them, then turned away, and re- 
sumed his seat. Trevanion beckoned to me, and I 
followed him down stairs, and into a little parlor which 
was unoccupied. 

After some remarks upon Roland, full of deep and con- 
siderate feeling, and one quick, hurried reference to the 
son — to the effect that his guilty attempt would never 
be known by the world — Trevanion then addressed him- 
self to me with a warmth and urgency that took me by 
surprise. “After what has passed,” he exclaimed, “ I 
cannot suffer you to leave England thus. Let me not 
feel with you, as with your uncle, that there is nothing 
by which I can repay — no, I will not so put it — stay 
and serve your country at home : it is my prayer, it is 
Ellinor’s. Out of all at my disposal it will go hard but 
what I shall find something to suit you.” And then, 
hurrying on, Trevanion spoke flatteringly of my pre- 
tensions, in right of birth and capabilities, to honorable 
employment, and placed before me a picture of public 
life — its prizes and distinctions — which, for the moment 
at least, made my heart beat loud and my breath come 
(|uick But still, even then, I felt (was it an unreasonable 
pride ?) that there was something that jarred, something 


276 


THE CAXTONS: 


that humbled, in the thought of holding all my fortunes 
as a dependency on the father of the woman I loved, but 
might not aspire to ; — something even of personal 
degradation in the mere feeling that I was thus to be 
repaid for a service, and recompensed for a loss. But 
these were not reasons I could advance ; and, indeed, so 
for the time did Trevanion’s generosity and eloquence 
overpower me, that I could only falter out my thanks, 
and my promise that I would consider and let him know. 

With that promise he was forced to content himself; 
he told me to direct to him at his favorite country-seat, 
whither he was going that day, and so left me. I looked 
round the humble parlor of the mean lodging-house, and 
Trevanion’s words came again before me like a flash of 
golden light. I stole into the open air, and wandered 
through the crowded streets, agitated and disturbed. 


CHAPTER X. 

Several days elapsed — and of each day my father 
spent a considerable part at Vivian’s lodgings. But he 
maintained a reserve as to his success, begged me not to 
question him, and to refrain also for the present from 
visiting my cousin. My uncle guessed or knew his 
brother’s mission ; for I observed that, whenever Austin 
went noiseless away, his eye brightened, and the color 
rose in a hectic flush to his cheek. At last my father 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


277 


came to me one morning, his carpet-bag in his hand, and 
said, I am going away for a week or two. Keep 
Roland company till 1 return.” 

“ Going with him ? ” 

“With him.” 

“That is a good sign.” 

“ I hope so : that is all I can say now.” 

The week had not quite passed when I received from 
my father the letter I am about to place before the reader, 
and you may judge how earnestly his soul must have 
been in the task it had volunteered, if you observe how 
little, comparatively speaking, the letter contains of the 
subtleties and pedantries (may the last word be pardoned, 
for it is scarcely a just one) which ordinarily left my 
father, a scholar even in the midst of his emotions. He 
seemed here to have abandoned his books, to have put 
the human heart before the eyes of his pupil, and said, 
“ Read and wn-learn I ” 

To PiSISTRATUS CaXTON. 

“ My dear Son, — It were needless to tell you all the 
earlier difficulties I have had to encounter with my charge, 
or to repeat all the means which, acting on your sugges- 
tion (a correct one,) I have employed to arouse feelings 
long dormant and confused, and allay others, long pre- 
maturely active and terribly distinct. The evil was 
simply this : here was the intelligence of a man in all 
that is evil — and the ignorance of an infant in all that 
is good. In matters merely worldly, what wonderful 

II —24 2r 


278 


THE CAXTONS: 


acumen I in the plain principles of right and wrong, whai 
gross and stolid obtuseness I At one time, I am strain- 
ing all my poor wit to grapple in an encounter on the 
knottiest mysteries of social life; at another, 1 am 
guiding reluctant fingers over tthe horn-book of the m )st 
obvious morals. Here hieroglyphics, and theie pot- 
hooks. But as long as there is affection in a man, why, 
there is Nature to begin with I To get rid of all the 
rubbish laid upon her, clear back the way to that Nature, 
and start afresh — that is one’s only chance. 

“Well, by degrees I won my way, waiting patiently 
till the bosom, pleased with the relief, disgorged itself of 
all ‘its perilous stuff,’ — not chiding — not even remon- 
strating, seeming almost to sympathise, till I got him, 
Socratically, to disprove himself. When I saw that he 
no longer feared me — that my company had become a 
relief to him — I proposed an excursion, and did not tell 
him whither. 

“Avoiding as much as possible the main north road 
(for I did not wish, as you may suppose, to set fire to a 
train of associations that might blow us up to the dog- 
star,) and, where that avoidance was not possible, 
travelling by night, I got him into the neighborhood of 
the old Tower. I would not admit him under its roof. 
But you know the little inn, three miles off, near the 
trout stream ? — we made our abode there. 

“Well, I have taken him into the village, preserving 
his incognito. I have entered with him into cottages, 
and turned the talk upon Roland. You know how your 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


27 $ 


ancle is adored ; you know what anecdotes of his bold, 
warm-hearted youth once, and now of his kind and 
charitable age, would spring up from the garrulous lips 
of gratitude I I made him see with his own eyes, hear 
with his own ears, how all who knew Roland loved and 
honored him — except his son. Then I took him round 
the ruins — (still not suffering him to enter the house,) 
for those ruins are the key to Roland’s character — seeing 
them, one sees the pathos in his poor foible of family 
pride. There, you distinguish it frois the insolent boasts 
of the prosperous, and feel that it is little more than the 
pious reverence to the dead — ‘ the tender culture of the 
tomb.’ We sat down on heaps of mouldering stone, and 
it was there that I explained to him what Roland was in 
youth, and what he had dreamed that a son would be to 
him. I showed him the graves of his ancestors, and ex- 
plained to him why they were sacred in Roland’s eyes I 
I had gained a great way, when he longed to enter the 
home that should have been his ; and I could make him 
pause of his own accord, and say, ‘No, I must first be 
worthy of it.’ Then you would have smiled — sly 
satirist that you are — to have heard me impressing upon 
this acute, sharp-witted youth, all that we plain folk un- 
derstand by the name of home — its perfect tru«t and 
truth, its simple holiness, its exquisite happiness — being 
to the world what conscience is to the human mind. 
And after that, I brought in his sister, whom till then he 
had scarcely named — for whom he scarcely seemed to 
care — brought her in to aid the father, and eudeai- the 


280 


THE CAXTONS: 


home. ‘And you know/ said I, ‘that if Roland were to 
die, it would be a brother’s duty to supply his place ; to 
shield her innocence — to protect her name I A good 
name is something, then. Your father was not so wrong 
to prize it. You would like yours to be that which your 
sister would- be proud to own 1 ’ 

“While we were talking, Blanche suddenly came to tho 
spot, and rushed to my arms. She looked on him as a 
stranger ; but I saw his knees tremble. And then she 
was about to put her hand in his — but I drew her back. 
Was I cruel ? He thought so. But when I dismissed 
her, I replied to his reproach, ‘Your sister is a part of 
Home. If you think yourself worthy of either, go and 
claim both; I will not object.’ — ‘She has my mother’s 
eyes,’ said he, and walked away. I left him to muse 
amidst the ruins, while I went in to see your poor mother, 
and relieve her fears about Roland, and make her under- 
stand why I could not yet return home. 

“ This brief sight of his sister has sunk deep into him. 
But I now approach what seems to me the great difficulty 
of the whole. He is fully anxious to redeem his name — 
to regain his home. So far, so well. But he cannot yet 
see ambition, except with hard, worldly eyes. He still 
fancies that all he has to do is to get money and power, 
and some of those empty prizes in the Great Lottery, 
which we often win more easily by our sins than our 
virtues. (Here follows a long passage from Seneca, 
omitted as superfluous.) He does not yet even under- 
etand me — or, if he does, he fancies me a mere book- 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


281 


worm indeed, when I imply that he might be poor and 
obscure, at the bottom of fortune’s wlieel, and yet be one 
we should be proud of I He supposes that, to redeem 
his name, he has only got to lacker it. Don’t think me 
merely the fond father, when I add my hope that I shall 
use you to advantage here. I mean to talk to him to- 
morrow, as we return to London, of you, and of your 
ambition : you shall hear the result. 

“At this moment (it is past midnight), I hear his step 
in the room above me. The window-sash aloft opens — 
for the third time : would to heaven he could read the 
true astrology of the stars I There they are — bright, 
luminous, benignant. And I seeking to chain this wander- 
ing comet into the harmonies of heaven I Better task 
than that of astrologers, and astronomers to boot ! Who 
among them can ‘ loosen the band of Orion ? ’ — but who 
amongst us may not be permitted by God to have sway 
over the action and orbit of the human soul ? 

“ Yoiir ever affectionate father, 

“A. C.’» 

Two days after the receipt of this letter, came the 
following ; and though I would fain suppress those refer- 
ences to myself which must be ascribed to a father’s 
partiality, yet it is so needful to retain them in connection 
with Vivian, that I have no choice but to leave the tendei 
flatteries to the indulgence of the kind : — 

“ My dear Son, — I was not too sanguine as to the 
gffect that your simple story would produce upon your 
24 * 


282 


THE CAXTONS: 


cousin Without implying any contrast to his own con* 
duct, T described that scene in which you threw yourself 
upon our sympathy, in the struggle between love and 
duty, and asked for our counsel and support; when 
Roland gave you his blunt advice to tell all to Trevanion ; 
and when, amidst such sorrow as the heart in youth seems 
scarcely large enough to hold, you caught at truth impul- 
sively, and the truth bore you safe from the shipwreck. 

I recounted your silent and manly struggles — your reso- 
lution not to suffer the egotism of passion to unfit you 
for the aims and ends of that spiritual probation which 
we call LIFE. I showed you as you were, still thoughtful 
for us, interested in our interests — smiling on us, that we 
might not guess that you wept in secret I Oh, my son — 
my son I do not think that, in those times, I did not feel 
and pray for you 1 And while he was melted by my own 
emotion, I turned from your love to your ambition. I 
made him see that you, too, had known the restlessness 
which belongs to young ardent natures ; that you, too, 
had your dreams of fortune, and aspirations for success. 
But I painted that ambition in its true colors ; it was not 
the desire of a selfish intellect to be in yourself a some- 
body — a something — raised a step or two in the social 
ladder, for the pleasure of looking down on those at the 
foot, but the warmer yearning of a generous heart ; your 
ambition was to repair your father’s losses — minister to 
your father’s very foible, in his idle desire of fame — supply 
to your uncle what he had lost in his natural heir — link 
your success to useful objects, your interests to those of 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


283 


your kind, your reward to the proud and grateful smiles 
of those you loved. That was thine ambition, 0 my 
tender Anachronism I ’And when, as I closed the sketch, 
I said, ‘ Pardon me ; you know not what delight a father 
feels, when, while sending a son away from him into the 
world, he can speak and think thus of him ! But this, 
you see, is not your kind of ambition. Let us talk of 
making money, and driving a coach-and-four through this 
villanous world,’ — your cousin sank into a profound 
reverie ; and when he woke from it, it was like the waking 
of the earth after a night in spring — the bare trees had 
put forth buds I 

“And some time after, he startled me by a prayer that 
I would permit him, with his father’s consent, to accom- 
pany you to Australia. The only answer I have given 
him as yet, has been in the form of a question : ‘Ask 
yourself if I ought? I cannot wish Pisistratus to be 
other than he is ; and unless you agree with him in all 
his principles and objects, ought I to incur the risk that 
you should give him your knowledge of the world, and 
inoculate him with your ambition ? ’ He was struck, and 
had the candor to attempt no reply. 

“ Now, Pisistratus, the doubt I expressed to him is the 
doubt I feel. For, indeed, it is only by home-truths, not 
refining arguments, that I can deal with this unscholastic 
Scythian, who, fresh from the Steppes, comes to puzzle 
me in the Portico. 

“ On the one hand, what is to become of him in the 
Old-World ? At his age, and with his energies, it would 


284 


THE CAXTONS : 


be impossible to cage him with us in the Cumberland 
ruins ; weariness and discontent would undo all we could 
do. He had no resource in books — and, I fear, never 
will have I But to send him forth into one of the over- 
crowded professions ; to place him amidst all those ‘ dis- 
parities of social life,^ on the rough stones of which he is 
perpetually grinding his heart ; turn him adrift amongst 
all the temptations to which he is most prone ; this is a 
trial which, I fear, will be too sharp for a conversion 
so incomplete. In the New World, no doubt, his 
energies would find a safer field ; and even the adventur- 
ous and desultory habits of his childhood might there be 
put to healthful account. Those complaints of the dis- 
parities of the civilised world find, I suspect, an easier, if 
a bluffer, reply from the political economist than the 
Stoic philosopher. ‘You don’t like them, you find it 
hard to submit to them,’ says the political economist ; 
‘ but they are the laws of a civilised state, and you can’t 
alter them. Wiser men than you have tried to alter 
them, and never succeeded, though they turned the earth 
topsy-turvy I Yery well; but the world is wide — go 
into a state that is not so civilised. The disparities of 
the Old World vanish amidst the New 1 Emigration is 
the reply of Nature to the rebellious cry against Art.’ 
Thus would say the political economist ; and, alas, even 
in your case, my son, I found no reply to the reasonings I 
I acknowledge, then, that Australia might open the best 
safety-valve to your cousin’s discontent and desires ; but 
I acknowledge also a counter-truth, which is this — ^-‘It 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


285 


is not permitted to an honest man to corrupt himself for 
the sake of others.’ That is almost the only maxim of 
Jean Jacques to which I can cheerfully subscribe I Do 
you feel quite strong enough to resist all the influences 
which a companionship of this kind may subject you to ; 
strong enough to bear his burthen as well as your own : 
strong enough, also — ay, and alert and vigilant enough 
to prevent those influences harming the others, whom 
you have undertaken to guide, and whose lots are confi- 
ded to you ? Pause well, and .consider maturely, for this 
must not depend upon a generous impulse. I think that 
your cousin would now pass under your charge with a 
sincere desire for reform ; but between sincere desire and 
steadfast performance there is a long and dreary interval, 
even to the best of us. Were it not for Roland, and had 
I one grain less confidence in you, I could not entertain 
the thought of laying on your young shoulders so great 
a responsibility. But every new responsibility to an 
earnest nature is a new prop to virtue ; and all I now ask 
of you is — to remember that it is a solemn and serious 
charge, not to be undertaken without the most deliberate 
gauge and measure of the strength with which it is to be 
borne. 

^‘In two days we shall be in London. — Yours, my 
Anachronism, anxiously and fondly, 

“A. C.” 

I was in my own room while I read this letter, and I 
Had just finished it, when, as I looked up, I saw Roland 


THE CAXTONS: 


standing opposite to me. “ It is from Austin,” said lie ; 
then he paused a moment, and added, in a tone that 
seemed quite humble, “ May I see it ? — and dare I ? ” 
1 placed the letter in his hands, and retired a few paces, 
that he might not think I watched his countenance while 
he read it. And I was only aware that he had come to 
the end by a heavy, anxious, but not disappointed sigh. 
Then I turned, and our eyes met, and there was some- 
thing in Roland’s look, inquiring — and, as it were, im- 
ploring. I interpreted it at once. 

“Oh, yes, uncle,” I said, smiling; “I have reflected, 
and I have no fear of the result. Before my father 
wrote, what he now suggests had become my secret wish. 
As for our other companions, their simple natures would 
defy all such sophistries as — but he is already half-cured 
of those. Let him come with me, and when he returns 
he shall be worthy of a place in your heart, beside his 
sister Blanche. I feel, I promise it — do not fear for me 1 
Such a charge will be a talisman to myself. I will shun 
every error that I might otherwise commit, so that he 
may have no example to entice him to err.” 

I know that in youth, and the superstition of first love, 
we are credulously inclined to believe that love, and the 
possession of the beloved, are the only happiness. But 
when my uncle folded me in his arms, and called me the 
hope of his age, and stay of his house — the music of my 
father’s praise still ringing on my heart — 1 do affirm 
that I knew a prouder bliss than if Trevanion had placed 
Fanny’s hand in mine, and said, “She is yours.” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


28 t 


.And now the die was cast — the decision made. It 
was with no regret that I wrote to Trevanion to decline 
lis offers. Nor was the sacrifice so great — even putting 
aside the natural pride which had before inclined to it* — 
as it may seem to some ; for, restless though I was, I had 
labored to constrain myself to other views of life than 
those which close the vistas of ambition with images of 
the terrestrial deities — Power and Rank. Had I not 
been behind the scenes, noted all of joy and of peace that 
the pursuit of power had cost Trevanion, and seen how 
little of happiness rank gave even to one of the polished 
habits and graceful attributes of Lord Castleton ? Yet 
each nature seemed fitted so well — the first for power, 
the last for rank I It is marvellous with what liberality 
Providence atones for the partial dispensations of For- 
tune. Independence, or the vigorous pursuit of it ; affec- 
tion, with its hopes and its rewards ; a life only rendered 
by Art more susceptible to Nature — in which the physical 
enjoyments are pure and healthful — in which the moral 
faculties expand harmoniously with the intellectual — and 
•the heart is at peace with the mind ; is this a mean lot 
for ambition to desire — and is it so far out of human 
reach ? “ Know thyself, ’’ said the old philosophy. “ Im- 

prove thyself,” saith the new. The great object of the 
Sojourner in Time is not to waste all his passions and 
gifts on the things external, that he must leave behind — 
that which he cultivates within is all that he can carry 
into the Eternal Progress. We are here but as school- 
boys, whose life begins where school ends ; and the 


288 


THE OAXTONS: 


battles we fought with our rivals, and the toys that ^ u 
shared with our playmates, and the names that we carvf d, 
high or low, on the wall, above our desks — will they co 
much bestead us hereafter ? As new fates crowd upon 
us, can they more than pass through the memory with a 
smile or a sigh ? Look back to thy school-days, and 
answer. 


CHAPTER XI. 

Two weeks since the date of the preceding chapter, 
have passed ; we have slept our last, for long years to 
come, on the English soil. It is night — and Yivian has 
been admitted to an interview with his father. They have 
been together alone an hour and more, and I and my 
father will not disturb them. But the clock strikes — the 
hour is late — the ship sails to-night — we should be on 
board. And as we two stand below, the door opens in 
the room above, and a heavy step descends the stairs ; 
the father is leaning on the son’s arm. You should see 
how timidly the son guides the halting step. And now 
as the light gleams on their faces, there are tears on 
Vivian’s cheek ; but the face of Roland seems calm and 
happy. Happy ! when about to be separated, perhaps 
for ever, from his son ? Yes, happy, because he has found 
a son for the first time ; and is not thinking of years and 
absence, and the chaice of death — but thankful for the 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


289 


Divine Mercy, and cherishing celestial hope. If ye 
wonder why Roland is happy in such an hour, how vainly 
have I sought to make him breathe, and live, and move 
before you I 

We are on board; our luggage all went first. I had 
had time, with the help of a carpenter, to knock up cabins 
for Yivian, Guy Bolding, and myself, in the hold. For, 
thinking we could not too soon lay aside the pretensions 
of Europe — “ dc-fine-gentlemanise ” ourselves, as Tre- 
vanion recommended — we had engaged steerage passage, 
to the great humoring of our finances. We had, too, the 
luxury to be by ourselves, and our own Cumberland 
folks were round us, as our friends and servants both. 

We are on board, and have looked our last on those we 
are to leave, and we stand on deck leaning on each other. 
We are on board, and the lights, near and far, shine from 
the vast City ; and the. stars are on high, bright and clear, 
as for the first mariners of old. Strange noises, rough 
voices, and crackling cords, and here and there the sobs 
of women, mingling with the oaths of men. Now the 
swing and heave of the vessel — the dreary sense of exile 
that comes when the ship fairly moves over the waters. 
And still we stood, and looked, and listened ; silent, and 
leaning on each other. 

Night deepened, the City vanished — not a gleam from 
its myriad lights I The river widened and widened. How 
cold comes the wind I — is that a gale from the sea ? The 
stars grow faint — the moon has sunk. And now how 

IT. — 25 


290 


THE CAXTONS. 


desolate seem the waters in the comfortless grey of dawn I 
Then w< shivered and looked at each other, and muttered 
something that was not the thought deepest at our hearts, 
and crept into our berths — feeling sure it was not for 
sleep. And sleep came on us, soft and kind. The ocean 
lulled the exiles as on a mother’s breast. 


PART SEVENTEENTH 


CHAPTER I. 

The stage-scene has dropped. Settle yoursehes, my 
good audience ; chat each with his neighbor. Dear 
madam, in the boxes, take up your opera-glass and look 
about you. Treat Tom and pretty Sal to some of those 
fine oranges, 0 thou happy-looking mother in the two- 
shilling gallery I Yes, brave ^prentice boys, in the tier 
above, the cat-call by all means 1 And you, “ most 
potent, grave, and reverend seigneurs,” in the front row 
of the pit — practised critics and steady old play-goers — 
who shake your heads at new actors and play-wrights, 
and, true to the creed of your youth, (for the which all 
honor to you I) firmly believe that we are shorter by the 
head than those giants our grandfathers — laugh or scold 
as you will, while the drop-scene still shuts out the stage. 
It is just that you should all amuse yourselves in your 
own way, 0 spectators I for the interval is long. All the 
actors have to change their dresses ; all the scene-shifters 
are at worx, sliding the “ sides ” of a new world into their 

( 291 ) 


292 


THE C A X T 0 N S : 


grooves ; and in high disdain of all unity of time, as of 
place, you will see in the play-hills that there is a great 
demand on your belief. You are called upon to suppose 
that we are older by five years than when you last saw 
us “fret our hour upon the stage.” Five years I the 
author tells us especially to humor the belief by letting 
the drop-scene linger longer than usual between the lamps 
and the stage. 

Play up I 0 ye fiddles and kettle-drums I the time is 
elapsed. Stop that cat-call, young gentleman I — heads 
down in the pit there I Now the flourish is over — the 
scene draws up : look before. 

A bright, clear, transparent atmosphere — bright as 
that of the East, but vigorous and bracing as the air of 
the North ; a broad and fair river, rolling through wide 
grassy plains ; yonder, far in the distance, stretch away 
vast forests of evergreen, and gentle slopes break the 
line of the cloudless horizon ; see the pastures, Arcadian 
with sheep in hundreds and thousands — Thyrsis and 
Menalcas would have had hard labor to count them, and 
small time, I fear, for singing songs about Daphne. But, 
alas ! Daphnes are rare : no nymphs with garlands and 
crooks trip over those pastures. 

Turn your eyes to the right, nearer the river ; just 
parted by a low fence from the thirty acres or so that are 
farmed for amusement or convenience, not for profit — 
that comes from the sheep — you catch a glimpse of a 
garden. Look not so scornfully at the primitive horti- 
culture — such gardens are rare in the Bush. I doubt if 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


2t)3 


the stately King of the Peak ever more rejoiced in the 
Famous conservatory, through which you may drive in 
your carriage, than do the sons of the Bush in the herbs 
and blossoms which taste and breathe of the old father- 
land. Go on, and behold the palace of the patriarchs — • 
it is of wood, I grant you, but the house we build with 
c -ir own hands is always a palace. Did you ever build 
one when you were a boy ? And the lords of that palace 
are lords of the land, almost as far as you can see, and 
of those numberless flocks ; and better still, of a health 
which an antediluvian might have envied, and of nerves 
so seasoned with horse-breaking, cattle-driving, fighting 
with wild blacks — chases from them and after them, for 
life and for death — that if any passion vex the breast 
of those kings of the Bushland, fear at least is erased 
from the list. 

See here and there through the landscape, rude huts 
like the masters’ — wild spirits and fierce dwell within. 
But they are tamed into order by plenty and hope ; by 
the hand open but firm, by the eye keen but just. 

Now, out from those woods, over those green rolling 
plains, harum-scarum, helter-skelter, long hair flying wild, 
and all bearded, as a Turk or a pard, comes a rider you 
recognise. The rider dismounts, and another old acquaint- 
ance turns from a shepherd, with whom he has been 
conversing on matters that never plagued Thyrsis and 
Menalcas, whose sheep seem to have been innocent of 
foot- ^ot and scab — and accosts the horseman. 

25 * 23 


294 


THE CAXTO NS : 


PisiSTRATUS. — My dear Guy, where on earth have 
you been ? 

Guy (producing a book from his pocket with great 
triumph).— There 1 Dv. Lives of the Poets. I 

could not get the squatter to let me have Kenilworth^ 
though I offered him three sheep for it. Dull old fellow, 
that Dr. Johnson, I suspect; so much the better, the 
book will last all the longer. And here^s a Sydney paper, 
too, only two months old 1 (Guy takes a short pipe, or 
dodeen, from his hat, in the band of which it had been 
stuck, fills and lights it.) 

PisiSTRATUS. — You must have ridden thirty miles at 
the least. To think of your turning book-hunter, Guy I 

Guy Bolding (philosophically). — Ay, one don’t know 
the worth of a thing till one has lost it. No sneers at 
me, old fellow ; you, too, declared that you were bothered 
out of your life by those books, till you found how long 
the evenings were without them. Then, the first new book 
we got — an old volume of the Spectator ! — such fun! 

PisiSTRATUS. — Yery true. The brown cow has calved 
in your absence. Do you know, Guy, I think we shall 
have no scab in the fold this year. If so, there will be a 
rare sum to lay by ! Things look up with us now, Guy. 

Guy Bolding. — Yes! Very different from the first 
two years. You drew a long face then. How wise you 
were, to insist on our learning experience at another 
man’s station before we hazarded our own capital ! But, 
by Jove ! those sheep, at first, were enough to plague a 
man out of his wits. What with the wild dogs, just as 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


295 


the sheep had been washed and ready to shear; then that 
cursed scabby sheep of Joe Timmes’s, that we caughi 
rubbing his sides so complacently against our unsuspect- 
ing poor ewes. I wonder we did not run away. But 
^‘Patientia fit '' — what is that line in Horace? Never 
mind now. “ It is a long lane that has no turning” docs 
just as well as anything in Horace, and Yirgil to boot. 
I say, has not Vivian been here ? 

PisiSTEATUS. — No; but he will be sure to come to- 
day. 

Guy Bolding. — He has much the best berth of it. 
Horse-breeding and cattle-feeding ; galloping after those 
wild devils ; lost in a forest of horns ; beasts lowing, 
scampering, goring, tearing off like mad buffaloes ; horses 
galloping up hill, down hill, over rocks, stones, and 
timber; whips cracking, men shouting — your neck all 
but broken ; a great bull making at you full rush. Such 
fun I Sheep are dull things to look at after a bull-hunt 
and a cattle-feast. 

PisisTRATUS. — Every man to his taste in the Bush. 
One may make one’s money more easily and safely, with 
more adventure and sport, in the bucolic department. 
But one makes larger profit and quicker ^rtune, with 
good luck and good care, in the pastoral — and our 
object, I take it, is to get back to England as soon as we 

\ HD 

Guy Bolding. — Humph I I should be content to live 
and die in the Bush — nothing like it, if women were not 
BO scarce To think of the redundant spinster population 


296 


THE 3AXT0NS: 


at home, and not a spinster here to be seen within thirty 
miles, save Bet Goggins, indeed — and she has only one 
eye I But to return to Yivian — wdiy should it be our 
object, more than his, to get back to England as soon as 
we can ? 

PisiSTRATUS. — Not more, certainly. But you saw that 
an excitement more stirring than that we find in the sheep 
had become necessary to him. You know he was grow- 
ing dull and dejected ; the cattle station was to be sold a 
bargain. And then the Durham bulls, and the Yorkshire 
horses, which Mr. Trevanion sent you and me out as 
presents were so tempting, I thought we might fairly add 
one speculation to another; and since one of us must 
superintend the bucolics, and two of us were required for 
the pastorals, I think Yivian was the best of us three to 
intrust with the first ; and, certainly, it has succeeded as 
yet. 

Guy. — Why, yes, Yivian is quite in his element — 
always in action, and always in command. Let him be 
first in everything, and there is not a finer fellow, nor a 
better tempered — present company excepted. Hark ! the 
dogs, the crack of the whip ; there he is. And now, I 
suppose, we may go to dinner. 

Enter Yivian. 

His frame has grown more athletic; his eye, more 
steadfast and less restless, looks you full in the face. 
His smile is more open ; but there is a melancholy in his 
expression, almost approaching to gloom. His dress is 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


297 


tlie same as that of Pisistratus and Guy — white vest and 
trowsers ; loose neckcloth, rather gay in color j broad 
cabbage-leaf hat ; his moustache and beard are trimmed 
with more care than ours. He has a large whip in his 
hand, and a gun slung across his shoulders. Greetings 
are exchanged ; mutual inquiries as to cattle and sheep, 
and the last horses despatched to the Indian market. 
Guy shows the Lives of the Poets; Yivian asks if it is 
possible to get the Life of Clive, or Napoleon, or a copy 
of Plutarch. Guy shakes his head — says, if a Robinson 
Crusoe will do as well, he has seen one in a very tattered 
state, but in too great request to be had a bargain. 

The party turn into the hut. Miserable animals are 
bachelors in all countries ; but most miserable in Bush- 
land. A man does not know what a helpmate of the 
soft sex is in the Old World, where women seem a matter 
of course. But in the Bush, a wife is literally bone of 
your bone, flesh of your flesh — your better half, your 
ministering angel, your Eve of the Eden — in short, all 
that poets have sung, or young orators say at public 
dinners, when called upon to give the toast of “The 
Ladies.” Alas ! we are three bachelors, but we are better 
off than bachelors often are in the Bush. For the wife 
of the shepherd I took from Cumberland does me and 
Bolding the honor to live in our hut, and make things 
tidy and comfortable. She has had a couple of children 
since we have been in the Bush ; a wing has been added 
ro tlie hut for that increase of family. The children, I . 
dare sav. one might have thought a sad nuisance in 


298 


THE CAXTONS: 


England; but I declare that, surrounded as one is by 
great bearded men, from sunrise to sunset, there is some- 
thing humanising, musical, and Christian-like in the very 
squall of the baby. There it goes — bless it I As for 
my other companions from Cumberland, Miles Square, 
the most aspiring of all, has long left me, and is super- 
intcndent to a great sheep-owner some two hundred miles 
off. The Will-o’-the-Wisp is consigned to the cattle 
station, where he is Vivian’s head man, finding time now 
and then to indulge his old poaching propensities at the 
expense of parrots, black cockatoos, pigeons, and kan- 
garoos. The shepherd remains with us, and does not 
seem, honest fellow, to care to better himself ; he has a 
feeling of clanship, which keeps down the ambition 
common in Australia. And his wife — such a treasure ! 
I assure you, the sight of her smooth, smiling woman’s 
face, when we return home at nightfall, and the very flow 
of her gown, as she turns the “dampers”* in the ashes, 
and fills the teapot, have in them something holy and 
angelical. How lucky our Cumberland swain is not 
jealous 1 Not that there is any cause, enviable dog 
though he be ; but where Desdemonas are so scarce, if 
y)u could but guess how green-eyed their Othellos 
generally are! Excellent husbands, it is true — none 
better ; but you had better think twice before you attempt 
to play the Cassio in Bushland 1 There, however, she 
IS, dear creature I — rattling among knives and forks, 


* A damper is a cake of flour baked without yeast, in the ashes 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


299 


smoothing the table-cloth, setting on the salt beef, and 
that rare luxury of pickles (the last pot in our store.) 
and the produce of our garden and poultry-yard, which 
few Bushmen can boast of — and the dampers, and a pot 
of tea to each banqueter ; no wine, beer, iior spirits — 
those are only for shearing- time. We have just said 
grace (a fashion retained from the holy mother-country,) 
u hen, bless my soul I what a clatter without, what a 
tramping of feet, what a barking of dogs I Some guests 
have arrived. They are always welcome in Bushland ! 
Perhaps a cattle-buyer in search of Yivian ; perhaps that 
cursed squatter, whose sheep are always migrating to 
ours. Never mind, a hearty welcome to all — friend or 
foe. The door opens ; one, two, three strangers. More 
plates and knives ; draw your stools ; just in time. First 
eat, then — what news ? 

Just as the strangers sit down, a voice is heard at the 
door — 

“ You will take particular care of this horse, young 
man : walk him about a little ; wash his back with salt and 
water. Just unbuckle the saddle-bags ; give them to me. 
Oh I safe enough, I dare say — but papers of consequence. 
The prosperity of the colony depends on these papers. 
What would become of you all if any accident happened 
to them, I shudder to think.” 

And here, attired in a twill shooting-jacket, budding 
with gilt buttons, impressed with a well-remembered de- 
vice : a cabbage-leaf hat shading a face rarely seen in the 
(5uaii — a face smooth as razor could make it : neat, trim 


300 


THE C AXT ON S . 


respectable-looking as ever — bis arm full of saddle-bags, 
and his nostrils gently distended, inhaling the steam of 
the banquet, walks in — Uncle Jack. 

PisiSTRATUS (leaping up). — Is it possible? You in 
k ustralia — you in the Bush I 

Uncle Jack, not recognising Pisistratus in the talk 
bearded man who is making a plunge at him, recedes in 
alarm, exclaiming — “Who are you? — never saw yon 
before, sir ! I suppose you’ll say next that I owe you 
something ! ” 

PisiSTHATUS. — Uncle Jack I 

Uncle Jack (dropping his saddle-bags). — Nephew I — 
Heaven be praised ! Come to my arms 1 

They embrace ; mutual introductions to the company — 
Mr. Yivian, Mr. Bolding, on the one side — Major 
MacBlarney, Mr. Bullion, Mr. Emanuel Speck, on the 
other. Major MacBlarney is a fine portly man, with a 
slight Dublin brogue, who squeezes your hand as he would 
a sponge. Mr. Bullion — reserved and haughty — wears 
green spectacles, and gives you a fore-finger. Mr. 
Emanuel Speck — unusually smart for the Bush, with a 
blue satin stock, and one of those blouses common in 
Germany, with elaborate hems, and pockets enough fi r 
Briareus to have put all his hands into at once — is thin, 
civil, and stoops — bows, smiles, and sits down to dinner 
again, with the air of a man accustomed to attend to the 
main chance. 

Uncle Jack (his mouth full of beef). — Famous beef! 
— breed it yourself, eh ? Slow work that cattle-feeding I 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


30V 


— Empties the rest of the pickle-jar into his plate.) Must 
learn to go ahead in the New World — railway times these I 
We can put him up to a thing or two — eh, Bullion? 
(Whispering me) — Great capitalist that Bullion I look 

AT HIM ! 

Mr. Bullion (gravely). ~ A thing or two I If he has 
capital — you have said it, Mr. Tibbets. (Looks round 
for the pickles — the green spectacles remain fixed upon 
Uncle jack’s plate.) 

Uncle Jack. — All that this colony wants is a few men 
like us, with capital and spirit. Instead of paying 
paupers to emigrate, they should pay rich men to come — 
eh. Speck ? 

While Uncle Jack turns to Mr. Speck, Mr. Bullion fixes 
his fork in a pickled onion in Jack’s plate, and transfers 
it to his own — observing, not as incidentally to the onion, 
but to truth in general — “A man, gentlemen, in this 
country, has only to keep his eyes on the look-out, and 
seize on the first advantage I — resources are incal- 
culable I ” 

Uncle Jack, returning to the plate and missing the 
onion, forestalls Mr. Speck in seizing the last potato — 
observing also, and in the same philosophical and gene* 
ralising spirit as Mr. Bullion — “ The great thing in this 
country is to be always beforehand : discovery and invou- 
ti )n, promptitude and decision I — that’s your go. ’Pon 
my life, one picks up sad vulgar sayings among the 
natives here ! — ‘ that’s your go ! ’ shocking I What 
would your poor father say ? How is he — good Austin / 

11.^26 


302 


THE CAXTONS: 


Well? — that’s right: and my dear sister? Ah, that 
damnable Peck I — still harping on the Anti-Gapitalistf 
eh ? But, I’ll make it up to you all now. Gentlemen, 
charge your glasses — a bumper-toast. 

Mr. Speck (in an affected tone). — I respond to the 
seiitimont in a flowing cup. Glasses are not forthcoming. 

Uncle Jack. — A bumper-toast to the health of the 
future millionaire, whom I present to you in my nephew 
and sole heir — Pisistratus Caxton, Esq. Yes, gentlemen, 
I here publicly announce to you that this gentleman will 
be the inheritor of all my wealth — freehold, leasehold, 
agricultural, and mineral ; and when I am in the cold 
grave — (takes out his pocket-handkerchief ) — and nothing 
remains of poor John Tibbets, look upon that gentleman, 
and say, John Tibbets lives again I ” 

Mr. Speck (chauutingly) — 

“ Let the bumper-toast go round.* 

Guy Bolding. — Hip, hip, hurrah I— three times three ! 
What fun I 

Order is restored ; dinner-things are cleared ; each 
gentleman lights his pipe. 

Yivian. — What news from England? 

Mr. Bullion. — As to the funds, sir ? 

Mr. Speck . — I suppose you mean, rather, as to the 
railways ; great fortunes will be made there, sir ; but still 
I think that our speculations here will 

Yivian. — I beg pardon for interrupting you, sir : but 
I thought, in the last papers, that there seemed some 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


303 


thing hostile in the temper of the French. No chance of 
a war ? 

Major MacBlarney. — Is it the war you’d be after, 
young gintleman ? If me interest at the Horse Guards 
can avail you, bedad ! you’d make a proud man of Major 
MacBlarney. 

Mr. Bullion (authoritatively). — No, sir, we won’t 
have a war : the capitalists of Europe and Australia won’t 
have it. The Bothschilds, and a few others that shall be 
nameless, have only got to do this, sir — (Mr. Bullion 
buttons up his pockets) — and we’ll do it too ; and then 
what becomes of your war, sir ? (Mr. Bullion snaps his 
pipe in the vehemence with which he brings his hand on 
the table, turns round the green spectacles, and takes up 
Mr. Speck’s pipe, which that gentleman had laid aside in 
an unguarded moment.) 

Yivian. — But the campaign in India? 

Major MacBlarney. — Oh I — and if it’s the Ingees 
you’d 

Bullion (refilling Speck’s pipe from Guy Bolding’s ex- 
clusive tobacco-pouch, and interrupting the Major). — 
India — that’s another matter; I don’t object to that I 
War there — rather good for the money market than 
otherwise ! 

Yivian. — What news there, then ? 

Mr Bullion. — Don’t know — haven’t got India stock. 

Mr. Speck. — Nor I either. The day for India is 
over ; this is our India now. (Misses his tobacco-pipe ; 
•ees it in Bullion’s mouth, and stares aghast I — N.B 


304 


THE C AXTON S: 


The pipe is not a clay c?o<igen, but a small meerschaum — 
irreplaceable in Bushland.) 

PisisTRATUS. — Well, uncle, but I am at a loss to 
understand what new scheme you have in hand. Some- 
thing benevolent I am sure — something for your fellovv' 
creatures — for philanthropy and mankind ? 

Mr. Bullion (starting). — Why, young man, are you 
as green as all that ? 

Pisistratus. — I, sir — no — Heaven forbid 1 But my 

(Uncle Jack holds up his forefinger imploringly, and 

spills his tea over the pantaloons of his nephew !) 

Pisistratus, wroth at the effect of the tea, and therefore 
obdurate to the sign of the forefinger, continues rapidly, 
‘‘But my uncle is! — some Grand National-Imperial 
Colonial- Anti-Monopoly” 

Uncle Jack. — Pooh ! pooh I What a droll boy it is 1 

Mr. Bullion (solemnly). — With these notions, which 
not even in jest should be fathered on my respectable and 
intelligent friend here — (Uncle Jack bows) — I am afraid 
you will never get on in the world, Mr. Caxton. I don’t 
think our speculations will suit you! It is growing late, 
gentlemen : we must push on. 

Uncle Jack (jumping up). — And I have so much to 
say to the dear boy. Excuse us : you know the feelings 
of an uncle I (Takes my arm, and leads me out of the 
hut. ) 

Uncle Jack (as soon as we are in the air). — You’L 
ruin us — you, me, and your father and mother. Yes! 
What do vou think I work and slave myself for but foi 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


305 


you and yours ? Ruin us all, I say, if you talk in that 
way before Bullion I His heart is as hard as the Bank 
of England’s — and quite right he is, too. Fellow-crea- 
tures I — stuff! I have renounced that delusion — the 
generous follies of my youth I I begin at last to live for 
myself — that is, for self and relatives I I shall succeed 
this time, you’ll see I 

PisiSTRATUs. — Indeed, uncle, I hope so sincerely; 
and, to do you justice, there is always something very 
clever in your ideas — only they don’t — 

Uncle Jack (interrupting me with a groan). — The 
fortunes that other men have gained by my ideas I — 
shocking to think of ! — What 1 and shall I be reproached 
if I live no longer for such a set of thieving, greedy 
ungrateful knaves ? No, no I Number One shall be my 
maxim ; and I’ll make you a Croesus, my boy — I will. 

Pisistratus, after grateful acknowledgments for all 
prospective benefits, inquires how long J ack has been in 
A ustralia ; what brought him into the colony ; and what 
are his present views. Learns, to his astonishment, that 
Uncle Jack has been four years in the colony ; that he 
sailed the year after Pisistratus — induced, he says, by 
that illustrious example, and by some mysterious agency 
or commission, which he will not explain, emanating 
either from the Colonial Office, or an Emigration Com- 
pany. Uncle Jack has been thriving wonderfully since 
he abandoned his fellow-creatures. His first speculation^ 
on arriving at the colony, was in buying some houses in 
Sydney, which (by those fluctuations in prices common to 
26* u 


306 


THE C AXTONS : 


the extremes of the colonial mind — which is one while 
skipping up the rainbow with Hope, and at another plung- 
ing into Acherontian abysses with Despair) he bought 
excessively cheap, and sold excessively dear. But his 
grand experiment has been in connection with the infant 
settlement of Adelaide, of which he considers himself one 
of the first founders ; and a.s, in the rush of emigration 
which poured to that favored establishment in the earlier 
years of its existence, — rolling on its tide all manner of 
credulous and inexperienced adventurers, — vast sums were 
lost, so, of those sums, certain fragments and pickings 
were easily griped and gathered up by a man of Uncle 
Jack’s readiness and dexterity. Uncle Jack had contrived 
to procure excellent letters of introduction to the colonial 
grandees : he got into close connection with some of the 
principal parties seeking to establish a monopoly of land 
(which has since been in great measure effected, by rais- 
ing the price, and excluding the small fry of petty capital- 
ists) ; and effectually imposed on them, as a man with a 
vast knowledge of public business — in the confidence of 
great men at home — considerable influence with the 
English press, &c., &c. And no discredit to their dis- 
cernment ; for J ack, when he pleased, had a way .with 
him that was almost irresistible. In this manner he con- 
trived to associate himself and his earnings with men 
really of large capital, and long practical experience in 
the best mode by which that capital might be employed. 
He was thus admitted into a partnership (so fai as his 
means went) with Mr. Bullion, who was one of the (argest 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


301 


Bheep-owners and land-holders in the colony ; though 
haTing many other nests to feather, that gentleman resided 
in state at Sydney, and left his runs and stations to the 
care of overseers and superintendents. But land-jobbing 
was J ack’s special delight ; and an ingenious German 
having lately declared that the neighborhood of Adelaide 
betrayed the existence of those mineral treasures which 
have since been brought to day, Mr. Tibbetts had per- 
suaded Bullion and the other gentlemen now accompany- 
ing him, to undertake the land journey from Sydney to 
Adelaide, privily and quietly, to ascertain the truth of the 
German’s report, which was at present very little believed. 
If the ground failed of mines, Uncle Jack’s account con- 
vinced his associates that mines quite as profitable might 
be found in the pockets of the raw adventurers, who were 
ready to buy one year at the dearest market, and driven 
to sell the next at the cheapest. 

*‘But,” concluded Uncle Jack, with a sly look, and 
giving me a poke in the ribs, “ I’ve had to do with mines 
before now, and know what they are. I’ll let nobody 
but you into my pet scheme ; you shall go shares if you 
like. The scheme is as plain as a problem in Euclid, — 
if the German is right, and there are mines, why, the 
mines will be worked. Then miners must be employed ; 
but miners must eat, drink, and spend their money. The 
thing is to get that money. Do you take ?” 

PisisTRATUS. — Not at all I 

Uncle Jack (majestically). — A Great Grog and 
Store Depot I The miners want grog and stores ; come 


308 


THE CAXTONS: 


to your depot ; you take their money ; Q.E.D. I Shares 
■ — eh, you dog ? Cribs, as we said at school. Put in a 
paltry thousand or two, and you shall go halves. 

PisiSTRATUS (vehemently). — Not for all the mines of 
Potosi. 

Uncle Jack (good-humoredly). — Well, it sha’nt be 
the worse for you. I sha’nt alter my will, in spite of your 
want of confidence. Your young friend, — that Mr. 
Vivian, I think you call him — intelligent-looking fellow, 
sharper than the other, I guess, — would he like a share ? 

PisiSTRATUS. — In the grog dep5t ? You had better 
ask him I 

Uncle Jack. — What ! you pretend to be aristocratic 
in the Bush I Too good. Ha, ha — they’re calling to 
me — we must be off. 

PISISTRATUS. — I will ride with you a few miles. What 
say you, Vivian ? and you, Guy ? — 

As the whole party now joined us. 

Guy prefers basking in the sun, and reading the lAves 
of the Poets. Vivian assents ; we accompany the party 
till sunset. Major MacBlarney prodigalises his offers of 
service in every conceivable department of life, and winds 
up with an assurance that, if we want anything in those 
departments connected with engineering — such as mining, 
mapping, surveying, &c. — he will serve us, bedad, for 
nothing, or next to it. We suspect Major MacBlarney 
to be a civil engineer, suffering under the innocent hallu- 
cination that he has been in the army. 

Mr. Speck lets out to me, in a confidential whisper, that 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


309 


Mr. Bullion is monstrous rich, and has made his fortune 
from small beginnings, by never letting a good thing go. 
I think of Uncle Jack’s pickled onion, and Mr. Speck’s 
meerschaum, and perceive, with respectful admiration, 
that Mr. Bullion acts uniformly on one grand system. 
Ten minutes afterwards, Mr. Bullion observes, in a tone 
e(jually confidential, that Mr. Speck, though so smiling 
and civil, is as sharp as a needle ; and that if I want any 
oh ares in the new speculation, or indeed in any other, I 
had better come at once to Bullion, who would not de- 
ceive me for my weight in gold. “Not,” added Bullion, 
“ that I have anything to say against Speck. He is well 
enough to do in the world — a warm man, sir; and when 
a man is really warm, I am the last person to think of his 
little faults, and turn on him the cold shoulder.” 

“Adieu 1 ” said Uncle Jack, pulling out once more his 
pocket-handkerchief; “my love to all at home.” And 
sinking his voice into a whisper, “ If ever you think better 
of the grog and store dep5t, nephew, you’ll find an uncle’s 
heart in this bosom I ” 


CHAPTER II. 

It was night as Yivian and myself rode slowly home. 
Night in Australia ! How impossible to describe its 
beauty 1 Heaven seems, in that new world, so much 

nearer to earth I Every star stands out so bright and 

2t 


310 


THE CAXTONS; 


particular, as if fresh from the time when the Maker willed 
it. And the moon like a large silvery sun ; — the least 
object on which it shines so distinct and so still.* Now 
and then a sound breaks the silence, but a sound so much 
in harmony with the solitude that it only deepemf its 
charms. Hark I the low cry of a night-bird, from yonder 
glen amidst the small grey gleaming rocks. Hark I as 
night deepens, the bark of the distant watch-dog, or the 
low strange howl of his more savage species, from which 
he defends the fold. Hark I the echo catches the sound, 
and flings it sportively from hill to hill — farther, and 
farther, and farther down, till all again is hushed, and the 
flowers hang noiseless over your head, as you ride through 
a grove of the giant gum-trees. Now the air is literally 
charged with the odors, and the sense of fragrance grows 
almost painful in its pleasure. You quicken your pace, 
and escape again into the open plains and the full moon- 
light, and through the slender tea-trees catch the gleam 
of the river, and in the exquisite fineness of the atmosphere 
hear the soothing sound of its murmur. 

PisiSTRATUS. — And this land has become the heritage 
of our people 1 Methinks I see, as I gaze around, the 
scheme of the All-beneficent Father disentangling itself 
clear through the troubled history of mankind. How 


* “I have frequently,” says Mr. Wilkinson, in his invaluable 
work upon South Australia, at once so graphic and so practical, 
“ been out on a journey in such a night, and whilst allowing the 
Uorse his own time to walk along the road, have solaced myself by 
reading in the still moonlight.” 


A. FAMILY PICTURE. 


311 


mysteriously, while Europe rears its populations, ana 
fulfils its civilising mission, these realms have been con- 
cealed from its eyes — divulged to us just as civilisation 
needs the solution to its problems ; a vent for feverish 
energies, baffled in the crowd ; offering bread to the 
famished, hope to the desperate ; in very truth enabling 
the “New World to redress the balance of the Old.” 
Here, what a Latium for the wandering spirits. 

On various seas by various tempests toss’d.” 

Here, the actual -^neid passes before our eyes. From 
the huts of the exiles scattered over this hardier Italy, 
who cannot see in the future, 

“ A race from whence new Alban sires shall come, 

And the long glories of a future Rome ? ” 

Vivian (mournfully). — Is it from the outcasts of tha 
work-house, the prison, and the transport-ship, that a 
second Rome is to arise ? 

PisiSTRATUS. — There is something in this new soil — 
in the labor it calls forth, in the hope it inspires, in the 
sense of property, which I take to be the core of social 
morals — that expedites the work of redemption with 
marvellous rapidity. Take them altogether, whatever 
their origin, or whatever brought them hither, they are a 
fine, manly, frank-hearted race, these colonists now 1 — rude, 
not mean, especially in the Bush, and, I suspect, will ul- 
timately become as gallant and honest a population as 
that now springing up in South Australia, from which 
convicts are excluded — and happily excluded — for the 


312 


THE CAXTONS; 


distinction will sharpen emulation. As to the rest, and in 
direct answer to your question, I fancy even the emancipist 
part of our population every whit as respectable as the 
mongrel robbers under Romulus. 

Vivian.— But were not soldiers ? — I mean the 
Grst Romans ? 

PisisTRATUS. — My dear cousin, we are in advance of 
those grim ontcasts, if we can get lands, houses, and 
wives (though the last is difficult, and it is well that we 
have no white Sabines in the neighborhood), without 
that same soldiering which was the necessity of their 
existence. 

Vivian (after a pause). — I have written to my father, 
and to yours more fully — stating in the one letter my 
wish, in the other trying to explain the feeling from 
which it springs. 

PisiSTRATUs. — Are the letters gone ? 

Vivian. — Yes. 

PisiSTRATUS. — And you would not show them to me I 

Vivian. — Do not speak so reproachfully. I promised 
your father to pour out my whole heart to him, whenever 
it was troubled and at strife. I promise you now that I 
will go by his advice. 

PISISTRATUS (disconsolately) — What is there in this 
military life for which you yearn that can yield you more 
food for healthful excitement and stirring adventure than 
your present pursuits afford? 

Vivian. — Distinction I You do not see the differenofi 
between us. You have but i fortui.e to make. I have £ 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


313 


name to redeem ; you lo\)k calmly on to the future ; J 
have a dark blot to erase from the past. 

PisiSTRATUs (soothingly). — It is erased. Pive years 
of no weak bewailings, but of manly reform, steadfast 
industry, conduct so blameless that even Guy (whom I 
look upon as the incarnation of blunt English honesty) 
half doubts whether you are ^cute enough for “ a station” 
— a character already so high, that I long for the hour 
when you will again take your father’s spotless name, and 
give me the pride to own our kinship to the world — all 
this surely redeems the errors arising from an uneducated 
childhood and a wandering youth. 

Yivian (leaning over his horse, and putting his hand 
on my shoulder). — “ My dear friend, what do I owe you I ” 
Then recovering his emotion, and pushing on at a quicker 
pace, while he continues to speak : “ But can you not see 
that, just in proportion as my comprehension of right 
would become clear and strong, so my conscience would 
become also more sensitive and reproachful ; and the 
better I understand my gallant father, the more I must 
desire to be as he would have had his son. Do you think 
it would content him, could he see me branding cattle, 
and bargaining with bullock-drivers? — Was it not the 
strongest wish of his heart that I should adopt his own 
career ? Have I not heard you say that he would have 
had you too a soldier, but for your mother ? I have no 
mother I If I made thousands, and tens of thousands, 
by this ignoble calling, would they give my father half 
the pleasure that he would feel at seeing my name honor 
II. - 27 


314 


THE CAXTONS: 


ably mentioned in a despatch? No, no I You have 
banished the gipsy blood, and now the soldier’s breaks 
out I Oh, for one glorious day in which I may clear my 
way into fair repute, as our fathers before us! — wheu 
tears of proud joy may flow from those eyes that have 
wept such hot drops at my shame. When she, too, iu 
her high station beside that sleek lord, may say, ' His 
heart was not so vile, after all I ’ Don’t argue with me — 
it is in vain ! Pray, rather, that I may have leave to 
work out my own way ; for I tell you that, if condemned 
to stay here, I may not murmur aloud — I may go 
through this round of low duties as the brute turns the 
wheel of a mill 1 but my heart will prey on itself, and 
you shall soon write on my grave-stone the epitaph of 
the poor poet you told us of, whose true disease was the 
thirst for glory — ‘ Here lies one whose name was written 
in water.’” 

I had no answer ; that contagious ambition made my 
own veins run more warmly, and my own heart beat with 
a louder tumult. Amidst the pastoral scenes, and under 
the tranquil moonlight of the New, the Old World, even 
in me, rude Bushman, claimed for a while its son. But 
as we rode on, the air, so inexpressibly buoyant, yet 
soothing as an anodyne, restored me to peaceful Nature. 
Now the flocks, in their snowy clusters, were seen sleep- 
ing under the stars ; hark I the welcome of the watch- 
dogs ; see the light gleaming far from the chink of the 
door I And, pausing, I said aloud : “ No, there is more 
glory in laying these rough foundations of a mighty state, 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


316 


though no trumpets resound with your victory — though 
no laurels shall shadow your tomb — than in forcing the 
onward progress of your race over burning cities and 
hecatombs of men I ” I looked round for Vivian’s answer ; 
but, ere I spoke, he had spurred from my side, and I saw 
the wild dogs slinking back from the hoofs of his horse, as 
he rode at speed, on the sward, through the moonlight. 


CHAPTER III. 

The weeks and the months rolled on, and the replies 
to Vivian’s letters came at last ; I foreboded too well 
their purport. I knew that my father could not set him- 
self in opposition to the deliberate and cherished desire 
of a man who had now arrived at the full strength of his 
understanding, and must be left at liberty to make his 
own election of the paths of life. Long after that date, 
I saw Vivian’s letter to my father ; and even his conver- 
sation had scarcely prepared me for the pathos of that 
confession of a mind remarkable alike for its strength and 
its weakness. If born in the age, or submitted to the 
influences, of religious enthusiasm, here was a nature that, 
awaking from sin, could not have been contented with 
the sober duties of mediocre goodness — that would have 
plunged into the fiery depths of monkish fanaticism — 
wrestled with the fiend in the hermitage, or marched 
barefoot on the infidel with a sackcloth for armor — the 


316 


THE OAXTONS. 


cross for a sword. Now, the impatient desire for redemp- 
tion took a more mundane direction, but with something 
that seemed almost spiritual in its fervor. And this 
enthusiasm flowed through strata of such profound melan- 
choly I Deny it vent, and it might sicken into lethargy, 
or fret itself into madness — give it the vent, and it might 
vivify and fertilise as it swept along. 

My father’s reply to this letter was what might be 
expected. It gently reinforced the old lessons in the dis 
tinctions between aspirations towards the perfecting our- 
selves — aspirations that are never in vain — and the 
morbid passion for applause from others, which shifts 
conscience from our own bosoms to the confused Babel of 
the crowd, and calls it “fame.” But my father, in his 
counsels, did not seek to oppose a mind so obstinately 
bent upon a single course — he sought rather to guide 
and strengthen it in the way it should go. The seas of 
human life are wide. Wisdom may suggest the voyage, 
but it must first look to the condition of the ship, and the 
nature of the merchandize to exchange. Not every 
vessel that sails from Tarshish can bring back the gold of 
Ophir; but shall it therefore rot in the harbor? No; 
give its sails to the wind I 

But I had expected that Roland’s letter to his . son 
would have been full of joy and exultation — joy there 
was none in it, yet exultation there might be, though 
serious, grave, and subdued. In the proud assent that 
the old soldier gave to his son’s wish, in his entire com- 
prehension of motives so akin to his own nature, there 


A FAMILY Picture. 


317 


was yet a visible sorrow ; it seemed even as if he con- 
strained himself to the assent he gave. Not till I had 
read it again and again could I divine Roland’s feelings 
while he wrote. At this distance of time, I comprehend 
them well. Had he sent from his side, into noble war- 
fare, some- boy fresh to life, new to sin, with an enthusiasm 
pure and single-hearted as his own young chivalrous 
ardor, then, with all a soldier’s joy, he had yielded a 
cheerful tribute to the hosts of England; but here he 
recognised, though perhaps dimly, not the frank military 
fervor, but the stern desire of expiation, and in that 
thought he admitted forebodings that would have been 
otherwise rejected, so that, at the close of the letter, it 
seemed not the fiery war-seasoned Roland that wrote, but 
rather some timid, anxious mother. Warnings and en- 
treaties and cautions not to be rash, and assurances that 
the best soldiers were ever the most prudent ; were these 
the counsels of the fierce veteran, who, at the head of the 

forlorn hope, had mounted the wall at , his sword 

between his teeth I 

But, whatever his presentiments, Roland had yielded 
at once to his son’s prayer — hastened to London at the 
receipt of his letter — obtained a commission in a regiment 
now in active service in India; and that commission was 
made out in his son’s name. The commission, with an 
order to join the regiment as soon as possible, accompanied 
the letter. 

And Vivian, pointing to the name addressed to him, 
said, “Now, indeed, I may resume this name, and, next 
27 ♦ 


818 


THE CAXTONS: 


to Heaven, will 1 Lold it sacred I It shall guide me to 
glory in life, or my father shall read it, without shame, 
on my tomb I ” I see him before me, as he stood then — 
his form erect, his dark eyes solemn in their light, a 
serenity in his smile, a grandeur on his brow, that I liad 
never marked till then I Was that the same man I had 
recoiled from as the sneering cynic, shuddered at as the 
audacious traitor, or wept over as the cowering outcast? 
How little the nobleness of aspect depends on symmetry 
of feature, or the mere proportions of form I What 
dignity robes the man who is filled with a lofty thought I 


CHAPTER lY. 

He is gone I he has left a void in my existence. I had 
grown to love him so well ; I had been so proud when 
men praised him. My love was a sort of self-love — I 
had looked upon him in part as the work of my own 
hands. I am a long time ere I can settle back, with 
good heart, to my pastoral life. Before my cousin went, 
we cast up our gains, and settled our shares. When he 
resigned the allowance which Roland had made him, his 
father secretly gave to me, for his use, a sum equal to that 
which I and Guy Bolding brought into the common stock. 
Roland had raised the sum upon mortgage ; and, while the 
interest was a trivial deduction from his income, compared 
to the former allowance, the capital was much more useful 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


319 


to his son than a mere yearly payment could have been. 
Thus, between us, we had a considerable sum for Austra- 
lian settlers — £4,500. For the first two years we made 
nothing ; indeed, great part of the first year was spent in 
learning our art, at the station of an old settler. But, a* 
the end of the third year, our flocks having then become 
Tery considerable, we cleared a return beyond my most 
sanguine expectations. And when my cousin left, just in 
the sixth year of exile, our shares amounted to £4,000 
each, exclusive of the value of the two stations. My 
cousin had, at first, wished that I should forward his 
share to his father, but he soon saw that Roland would 
never take it ; and it was finally agreed that it should rest 
in my hands, for me to manage for him, send him out an 
interest at five per cent., and devote the surplus profits to 
the increase of his capital. I had now, therefore, the con- 
trol of £12,000, and we might consider ourselves very 
respectable capitalists. I kept on the cattle station, by 
the aid of the Will-o’-the-Wisp, for about two years after 
Vivian’s departure (we had then had it altogether for 
five.) At the end of that time, I sold it and the stock to 
great advantage. And the sheep — for the “brand” of 
which I had a high reputation — having wonderfully 
prospered in the meanwhile, I thought we might safely 
extend our speculations into new ventures. Glad, too, of 
a change of scene, I left Bolding in charge of the flocks, 
and bent my course to Adelaide, for the fame of that new 
settlement had already disturbed the peace of the Bush. 
I found Uncle Jack residing near Adelaide, in a very 


320 


THE CAXTONS: 


handsome villa, with all the signs and appurtenances of 
colonial opulence ; and report, perhaps, did not ex- 
aggerate the gains he had made: — so many strings to 
his bow — and each arrow, this time, seemed to have gone 
straight to the white of the butts. I now thought I had 
acquired knowledge and caution sufficient to avail myself 
of Uncle Jack’s ideas, without ruining myself by following 
them out in his company ; and I saw a kind of retributive 
justice in making his brain minister to the fortunes which 
his ideality and constructiveness, according to Squills, had 
served so notably to impoverish. I must here gratefully 
acknowledge, that I owed much to this irregular genius. 
The investigation of the supposed mines had proved un- 
satisfactory to Mr. Bullion ; and they were not fairly dis- 
covered till a few years after. But Jack had convinced 
himself of their existence, and purchased, on his own ac- 
count, “ for an old song,” some barren land, which he waa 
persuaded would prove to him a Golconda, one day or 
other, under the euphonious title (which, indeed, it 
ultimately established) of the “Tibbets’ Wheal.” The 
suspension of the mines, however, fortunately suspended 
the existence of the Grog and Store Depot, and Uncle 
Jack was now assisting in the foundation of Port Philip. 
Profiting by his advice, I adventured in that new settle- 
ment some timid and wary purchases, which I resold to 
considerable advantage. Meanwhile, I must not omit to 
state briefly what, since my departure from England, had 
been the ministerial career of Trevanion. 

That refining fastidiousness, — that scrupulosity of 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


321 


political conscience, which had characterised him as an 
independent member, and often served, in the opinion 
both of friend and of foe, to give the attribute of general 
impracticability to a mind that, in all details, was sc 
essentially and laboriously practical — might perhaps have 
founded Trevanion’s reputation as a minister, if he could 
have been a minister without colleagues — if, standing 
alone, and from the necessary height, he could have 
placed, clear and single, before the world, his exquisite 
honesty of purpose, and the width of a statesmanship 
marvellously accomplished and comprehensive. But Tre- 
vanion could not amalgamate with others, nor subscribe 
to the discipline of a cabinet in which he was not the 
chief, especially in a policy which must have been 
thoroughly abhorrent to such a nature — a policy that, 
of late years, has distinguished not one faction alone, but 
has seemed so forced upon the more eminent political 
leaders, on either side, that they who take the more 
charitable view of things may, perhaps, hold it to arise 
from the necessity of the age, fostered by the temper of 
the public — I mean the policy of Expediency. Certainly 
not in this book will I introduce the angry elements of 
party politics ; and how should I know much about 
them ? All that I have to say is, that, right or wrong, 
such a policy must have been at war, every moment, with 
each principle of Trevanion’s statesmanship, and fretted 
each fibre of his moral constitution. The aristocratic 
aombinations which his alliance with the Castleton interest 
had brought to his aid, served perhaps to fortify his 


V 


322 


THE CAXTONS: 


position in the cabinet; yet aristocratic combinations 
were of small avail against what seemed the atmospheri- 
cal epidemic of the age. I could see how his situation 
had preyed on his mind, when I read a paragraph in the 
newspapers,’ “that it was reported, on good authority, 
that Mr. Trevanion had tendered his resignation, but had 
been prevailed upon to withdraw it, as his retirement at 
that moment would break up the government.’’ Some 
months afterwards came another paragraph, to the effect, 
“that Mr Trevanion was taken suddenly ill, and that it 
was feared his illness was of a nature to preclude his 
resuming his official labors.” Then parliament broke up. 
Before it met again, Mr. Trevanion was gazetted as Earl 
of Ulverstone, a title that had been once in his family — 
and had left the administration, unable to encounter the 
fatigues of office. To an ordinary man, the elevation to 
an earldom, passing over the lesser honors in the peerage, 
would have seemed no mean close to a political career ; 
but I felt what profound despair of striving against cir- 
cumstances for utility — what entanglements with his 
colleagues, whom he could neither conscientiously support, 
nor, according to his high old-fashioned notions of party 
honor and etiquette, energetically oppose — had driven 
him to abandon that stormy scene in which his existence 
had been passed. The House of Lords, to that active 
intellect, was as the retirement of some warrior of old 
into the cloisters of a convent. The gazette that chroni- 
cled the earldom of Ulverstone was the proclamation that 
Albert Trevanion lived no more for the world of public 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


323 


men. And, indeed, from that date his career vanished 
out of sight. Trevanion died — the Earl of Ulverstone 
made no sign. 

I had hitherto written but twice to Lady Ellinor during 
my exile — once upon the marriage of Fanny with Lord 
Castleton, which took place about six months after I 
sailed from England, and again, when thanking her 
husband for some rare animals, equine, pastoral, and 
bovine, which he had. sent as presents to Bolding and 
myself. I wrote again after Trevanion ^s elevation to the 
peerage, and received, in due time, a reply, confirming 
all my impressions — for it was full of bitterness and gall, 
accusations of the world, fears for the country : Richelieu 
himself could not have taken a gloomier view of things, 
when his levees were deserted, and his power seemed 
annihilated before the “ Day of Dupes. ’’ Only one gleam 
of comfort appeared to visit Lady TJlverstone’s breast, 
and thence to settle prospectively over the future of the 
world — a second son had been born to Lord Castleton j 
to that son would descend the estates of Ulverstone, and 
the representation of that line distinguished by Trevanion, 
and enriched by Trevanion’s wife. Never was there a 
child of such promise ! Not Yirgil himself, when he called 
on the Sicilian Muses to celebrate the advent of a son tc 
Pollio, ever sounded a loftier strain. Here wms one, 
now, perchance, engaged on words of two syllables, 
called — 

“ By laboring nature to sustain 
The nodding frame of heaven, and earth, and main, 

8ee to their base restored, earth, sea, and air, 

And joyful ages from behind in crowding ranks appear I ” 


324 


THE CAXTONS: 


Happy dream wliich Heaven sends to grand-parents I 
re-baptism of Hope in the font whose drops sprinkle the 
grandchild i 

Time flies on ; affairs continue to prosper. I am just 
leaving the bank at Adelaide with a satisfied air, when I 
am stopped in the street by bowing acquaintances, who 
never shook me by the hand before. They shake me by 
the hand now, and cry — “I wish you joy, sir. That 
brave fellow, your namesake, is of course your near 
relation.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ Have not you seen the papers ? Here they are.” 

“ Gallant conduct of Ensign de Caxton — promoted to 
a lieutenancy on the field.” — I wipe my eyes, and cry — 
“Thank Heaven — it is my cousin I ” Then new hand- 
shakings, new groups gather round. I feel taller by the 
head than I was before I We, grumbling English, always 
quarrelling with each other — the world not wide enough 
to hold us ; and yet, when in the far land some bold deed 
is done by a countryman, how we feel that we are bro- 
thers I how our hearts warm to each other I What a letter 
I wrote home I and how joyously I went back to the 
Bush I The Will-o’-the-Wisp has attained to a cattle- 
station of his own. I go fifty miles out of my way to 
tell him the news and give him the newspaper ; for he 
knows now that his old master, Yivian, is a Cumberland 
man — a Caxton. Poor Will-o’-the-Wisp ! The tea that 
night tasted uncommonly like whiskey-puixch 1 Father 
Mathew forgive us — but if you had been a Cumberland 


A FAMILY PICTURii:. 


325 


man, and heard the Will-o^-the-Wisp roaring out, “ Blue 
Bonnets over the Borders,” I think your tea, too, would 
not have come out of the — caddy I 


CHAPTER Y. 

A GREAT change has occurred in our household. Guy’s 
father is dead — his latter years cheered by the accounts 
of his son’s steadiness and prosperity, and by the touching 
proofs thereof which Guy has exhibited. For he insisted 
on repaying to his father the old college debts, and the 
advance of the £1,500, begging that the money might go 
towards his sister’s portion. Now, after the old gentle- 
man’s death, the sister resolved to come out and live with 
her dear brother Guy. Another wing is built to the hut. 
Ambitious plans for a new stone house, to be commenced 
the following year, are entertained ; and Guy has brought 
back from Adelaide not only a sister, but, to my utter as- 
tonishment, a wife, in the shape of a fair friend by whom 
the sister is accompanied 

The young lady did quite right to come to Australia, if 
she wanted to be married. She was very pretty, and all 
the beaux in Adelaide were round her in a moment. Guy 
was in love the first day — in a rage with thirty rivals the 
next — in despair the third — put the question the fourth 
— and before the fifteenth was a married man, hastening 
back with a treasure, of which he fancied all the world 
was conspiring to rob him. His sister was quite as pretty 

II —28 


THE CAXTONS: 


32 ^» 

as her friend, and she, too, had offers enough the momen' 
she landed — only she was romantic and fastidious, and Ji 
fancy Guy told her that “ I was just made for her.” 

However, charming though she be — with pretty blue 
eyes, and her brother’s frank smile — I am not enchanted. 
1 fancy she lost all chance of my heart by stepping across 
the yard in a pair of silk shoes. If I were to live in the 
Bush, give me a wife as a companion who can ride well, 
leap over a ditch, walk beside me when I go forth gun in 
hand, for a shot at the kangaroos. But I dare not go on 
with the list of a Bush husband’s requisites. This change, 
however, serves, for various reasons, to quicken my de- 
sire of return. Ten years have now elapsed, and I have 
already attained a much larger fortune than I had calcu- 
lated to make. Sorely to Guy’s honest grief, I therefore 
wound up our affairs, and dissolved partnership : for he 
had decided to pass his life in the colony — and with his 
pretty wife, who has grown very fond of him, .1 don’t 
wonder at it. Guy takes my share of the station and 
stock off my hands ; and, all accounts square between us, 
I bid farewell to the Bush. Despite all the motives that 
drew my heart homeward, it was not without participation 
in the sorrow of my old companions, that I took leave of 
those I might never see again on this side of the grave 
The meanest man in my employ had grown a friend ; and 
when those hard hands grasped mine, and from many a 
breast that once had waged fierce war with the world, 
?ame the soft blessing to the Homeward-bound — with a 
.ender thought for the Old England, that had been but a 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


327 


harsh stepmother to them — I felt a choking sensation 
which I suspect is little known to the friendships of May 
fair and St. James’s. I was forced to get off with a feY 
broken words, when I had meant to part with a long 
speech ; perhaps the broken words pleased the audience 
better. Spurring away, I gained a little eminence and 
looked back. There were the poor faithful fellows 
gathered in a ring, watching me — their hats off, their 
hands shading their eyes from the sun. And Guy had 
thrown himself On the ground, and I heard his loud sobs 
distinctly. His wife was leaning over his shoulder, trying 
to soothe. Forgive him, fair helpmate, you will be all in 
the world to him — to-morrow I And the blue-eyed sister, 
where was she ? Had she no tears for the rough friend 
who laughed at the silk shoes, and taught her how to hold 
the reins, and never fear that the old pony would run away 
with her ? What matter ? — if the tears were shed, they 
were hidden tears. No shame in them, fair Ellen I — since 
then, thou hast wept happy tears over thy first-born — 
those tears have long ago washed away all bitterness in 
the innocent memories of a girl’s first fancy. 


S2S 


THE CAXTONS; 


CHAPTER VI. 

DATED FROM ADELAIDE. 

Imagine my wonder — Uncle Jack has just been with 
me, and — but hear the dialogue — 

Uncle Jack. — So you are positively going back to 
that smoky, fusty, old England, just when you are on your 
high road to a plum. A plum, sir, at least I They all 
say there is not a more rising young man in the colony. 
I think Bullion would take you into partnership. What 
are you in such a hurry for ? 

PisiSTRATUS. — To see my father and mother, and 

Uncle Roland, and (was about to name some one 

else, but stops). You see my dear uncle, I came out 
solely with the idea of repairing my father’s losses, in that 
unfortunate speculation of The Capitalist. 

Uncle Jack (coughs and ejaculates). — That villain 
Peck I 

PisiSTRATUS. — And to have a few thousands to invest 
in poor Roland’s acres. The object is achieved : why 
should I stay ? 

Uncle Jack. — A few paltry thousands, when in twenty 
years more, at the farthest, you would wallow in gold ? 

PisiSTRATUS, — A man learns in the Bush how happy 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


329 


life can be with plenty of employment and very little 
money. I shall practise that lesson in England. 

Uncle Jack. — Your mind’s made up ? 

PisiSTRATUS. — And my place in the ship taken. 

Uncle Jack. — Then there’s no more to be said. 
(Hums, haws, and examines his nails — filbert nails, not a 
speck on them. Then suddenly, and jerking up his 
head) — That Capitalist! it has been on my conscience, 
nephew, ever since ; and, somehow or other, since I have 
abandoned the cause of my fellow-creatures, I think I 
have cared more for my relations. 

Pisistratus (smiling as he remembers his father’s 
shrewd predictions thereon). — Naturally, my dear uncle : 
any child who has thrown a stone into a ppnd knows that 
a circle disappears as it widens. 

Uncle Jack. — Very true — I shall make a note of 
that, applicable to my next speech, in defence of what 
they call the ‘‘land monopoly.” Thank you — stone — 
circle I '(Jots down notes in his pocket-book). But, to 
returr to the point : I am well off now — I have neither 
wife nor child ; and I feel that I ought to bear my share 
in your father’s loss : it was our joint speculation. And 
your father, good, dear Austin I paid my debts into the 
bargain. And how cheering the punch was that night, 
when your mother wanted to scold poor Jack I And the 
£300 Austin lent me when I left him : nephew, that was 
the re-making of me — the acom of the oak I have 
planted. So here they are (added Uncle Jack, with a 
heioical effort — and he extracted from the pocket-book 
28* 


330 


THE CAXTUN b . 


bills for a sum between three and four thousand pounds). 
There, it is done ; and I shall sleep better for it I (With 
that Uncle Jack got up, and bolted out of the room.) 

Ought I to take the money ? Why, I think yes 1 — it 
is but fair. Jack must be really rich, and can well spare 
the money; besides, if he wants it again, I know my 
father will let him have it. And, indeed. Jack caused 
the loss of the whole sum lost on The Capitalist, &c. : 
and this is not quite the half of what my father paid 
away. But is it not fine in Uncle Jack 1 Well, my father 
was quite right in’ his milder estimate of Jack^s scalene 
conformation, and it is hard to judge of a man when he is 
needy and down in the world. When one grafts one’s 
ideas on one’s neighbor’s money, they are certainly not 
so grand as when they spring from one’s own. 

Uncle Jack (popping his head into the room) — And, 
you see, you can double that money if you will just leave 
it in my hands for a couple of years — you have no notion 
what I shall make of the Tibbets’ Wheal I Did I iell you ? 
— the German was quite right — I have been offered 
already seven times the sum which I gave for the land. 
But I am now looking out for a company : let me put you 
down for shares to the amount at least of those trumpery 
bills. Cent, per cent. — I guarantee cent, per cent. I 
(And Uncle Jack stretches out those famous smooth 
hands of his, with a tremulous motion of the ten eloquent 
fingers). 

PisiSTiiATUS. — Ah I my dear uncle, if you repent — 


V 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


331 


Uncle Jack. — Repent I when I offer you cent, per 
cent., on ray personal guarantee I 

PisrSTRATUS (carefully putting the bills into his breast 
coat pocket). — Then, if you don’t repent, my dear uncle, 
allow me to shake you by the hand, and say that I will 
not consent to lessen my esteem and admiration for the 
high principle which prompts this restitution, by con- 
founding it with trading associations of loans, interests, 
and copper-mines. And, you see, since this sum is paid 
to my father, I have no right to invest it without his per- 
mission. 

Uncle Jack (with emotion). — “Esteem, admiration, 
high principle!” — these are pleasant words, from you, 
nephew. (Then, shaking his head, and smiling — You 
sly dog I you are quite right : get the bills cashed at once 
And hark ye, sir, just keep out of my way, will you ? and 
don’t let me coax from you a farthing. (Uncle Jack 
slams the door and rushes out. Pisistratus draws the 
bills warily from his pocket, half-suspecting they must 
already have turned into withered leaves, like fairy money ; 
slowly convinces himself that the bills are good bills; 
and, by lively gestures, testifies his delight and astonish- 
ment.) Scene changes. 


PAKT EIGHTEENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

Adieu, thou beautiful land ! Canaan of the exiles, and 
Ararat to many a shattered Ark I Fair cradle of a race 
for whom the unbounded heritage of a future, that no 
sage can conjecture, no prophet divine, lies afar in the 
golden promise-light of Time ! — destined, perchance, from 
the sins and sorrows of a civilisation struggling with its 
'Own elements of decay, to renew the youth of the world, 
and transmit the great soul of England through the cycles 
of Infinite Change. All climates that can best ripen the 
products of earth, or form into various character and 
temper the different families of man, “rain influences” 
from the heaven, that smiles so benignly on those who 
had once shrunk, ragged, from the wind, or scowled on 
the thankless sun. Here, the hardy air of the chill 
Mother Isle, there the mild warmth of Italian autumns, 
or the breathless glow of the tropics. And with all the 
oeams of every climate, guides subtle Hope. Of her there. 

( 332 ) 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


333 


it may be said, as of Light itself, in those exquisite lines 
of a neglected poet — 

“ Through the soft ways of heaven, and air, and sea, 

Which open all their pores to thee; 

Like a clear river thou dost glide — 
***** 

All the world’s bravery that delights our eyes, 

Is but thy several liveries ; 

Thou the rich dye on them bestowest: 

The nimble pencil paints the landscape as thou goest.” * 

Adieu, my kind nurse and sweet foster-mother I — a long 
and a last adieu I Never had I left thee but for that 
louder voice of Nature which calls the child to the parent, 
and WOOS us from the labors we love the best by the 
chime in the Sabbath-bells of Home. 

No one can tell how dear the memory of that wild 
Bush life becomes to him who has tried it with a fitting 
spirit. How often it haunts him in the commonplace of 
more civilised scenes I Its dangers, its risks, its sense of 
animal health, its bursts of adventure, its intervals of 
careless repose ; the fierce gallop through a very sea of 
wide rolling plains — the still saunter, at night, through 
w.oods, never changing their leaves ; with the moon, clear 
as sunshine, stealing slant through their clusters of flowers. 
With what an effort we reconcile ourselves to the trite 
cares and vexed pleasures, “ the quotidian ague of frigid 
impertinences,’^ to which we return I How strong and 
black stands my pencil-mark in this passage of the poet 
from whom I have just quoted before I — 


* Cowley’s Ode to Light. 


334 


THE CAXTONS: 


‘‘We are here among the vast and noble scenes of 
Nature — we are there among the pitiful shifts of policy ; 
we walk here, in the light and open ways of the Divine 
Bounty — we - grope there, in the dark and confused 
labyrinth of human malice.”* 

But I weary you, reader. The New World vanishes — 
now a line — now a speck ; let us turn away, with the 
face to the Old. 

Amongst my fellow-passengers, how many there are 
returning home disgusted, disappointed, impoverished, 
ruined, throwing themselves again on those unsuspecting 
poor friends, who thought they had done with the luck- 
less good-for-naughts for ever. For, don’t let me deceive 
thee, reader, into supposing that every adventurer to 
Australia has the luck of Pisistratus. Indeed, though 
the poor laborer, and especially the poor operative from 
London and the great trading towns (who has generally 
more of the quick knack of learning — the adaptable 
faculty — required in a new colony, than the simple 
agricultural laborer), are pretty sure to succeed, the class 
to which I belong is one in which failures are numerous, 
and success the exception — I mean young men with 
scholastic education and the habits of gentlemen — with 
small capital and sanguine hopes. But this, in ninety- 
nine times out of a hundred, is not the fault of the colony, 
out of the emigrants. It requires, not so much intellect 
IS a peculiar turn of intellect, and a fortunate combination 
of physical qualities, easy temper, and quick mother-wit. 


Cowley on Town and Country. (Discourse on Agriculture.) 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


335 


o make a small capitalist a prosperous Bushman.* And 
.f you could see the sharks that swim round a man just 
dropped at Adelaide or Sydney, with one or two thousand 
pounds in his pocket I Hurry out of the towns as fast 
as you can, my young emigrant ; turn a deaf ear, for tlie 
present at least, to all jobbers and speculators ; make 
friends with some practised old Bushman ; spend several 
months at his station before you hazard your capital ; 
take with you a temper to bear everything, and sigh for 
nothing ; put your whole heart in what you are about ; 
never call upon Hercules when your cart sticks in the rut, 
and, whether you feed sheep or breed cattle, your success 
is but a question of time. 

But, whatever I owed to nature, I owed also something 
to fortune. I bought my sheep at little more than 7s. 
each When I left, none were worth less than 15s., and 

* How true are the following remarks : — 

“Action is the first great requisite of a colonist (that is, a 
pastoral or agricultural settler). With a young man, the tone of 
his mind is more important than his previous pursuits. I have 
known men of an active, energetic, contented disposition, with a 
good flow of animal spirits, who had been bred in luxury and refine- 
ment, succeed better than men bred as farmers, who were always 
hankering after bread and beer, and market ordinaries of Old 
England. * * * To be dreaming when you should be looking 

after your cattle is a terrible drawback. * * * There are 

certain persons who, too lazy and too extravagant to succeed in 
Europe, sail for Australia under the idea that fortunes are to be 
made there by a sort of legerdemain, spend or lose their capital in 
a very short space of time, and return to England to abuse the 
place, the people, and everything connected with colonisation.” — 
Sidney's Australian Handbook — admirable for its wisdom and com- 
pactness 


336 


THE CAXTONS: 


the fat sheep were worth £1.* I had an excellent shep* 
herd, and my whole care, night and day, was the improve- 
ment of the flock. I was fortunate, too, in entering 
Australia before the system miscalled The Wakefield ’’ f 
had diminished the supply of labor, and raised the price 
of land. When the change came (like most of those 
with large allotments and surplus capital), it greatly 

* Lest this seem an exaggeration, I venture to annex an extract 
from a MS. letter to the author from Mr. George Blakeston Wilkin- 
son, author of South Australia. 

“ I will instance the case of one person, who had been a farmer 
in England, and emigrated with about £2000 about seven years 
since. On his arrival, he found that the price of sheep had fallen 
from about 305. to bs. or 65. per head, and he bought some well- 
bred flocks at these prices. He was fortunate in obtaining a good 
and extensive run, and he devoted the whole of his time to 
improving his flocks, and encouraged his shepherds by rewards; 
BO that, in about four years, his original number of sheep had 
increased from 2500 (which cost him £700) to 7000; and the breed 
and wool were also so much improved, that he could obtain £1 per 
head for 2000 fat sheep, and 155. per head for the other 5000, and 
this at a time when the general price of sheep was from IO5. to I65. 
This alone increased his original capital, invested in sheep, from 
£700 to £5700. The profits from the wool paid the whole of hia 
expenses and wages for his men.” 

f I felt sure from the first, that the system called *• The Wake- 
field” could never fairly represent the ideas of Mr. Wakefield 
himself, whose singular breadth of understanding, and various 
knowledge of mankind, belied the notion that fathered on him the 
clumsy execution of a theory wholly inapplicable to a social state 
like Australia. I am glad to see that he has vindicated himself 
from the discreditable paternity. But I grieve to find that he still 
clings to one cardinal error of the system, in the discouragement 
of small holdings, and that he evades, more ingeniously than inge- 
nuously, the important question — “What should be the minimum 
price of land ?” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


BB1 

increased the value of my own property, though at the* 
cost of a terrible blow on the general interests of the 
colony. I was lucky, too, in the additional venture of a 
cattle-station, and in the breed of horses and herds, which, 
in the five years devoted to that branch establishment, 
trebled the sum invested therein, exclusive of the advan- 
tageous sale of the station.* I was lucky, also, as I have 
stated, in the purchase and resale of lands, at Uncle 
Jack’s recommendation. And, lastly, I left in time, and 
escaped a very disastrous crisis in colonial affairs, which 
I take the liberty of attributing entirely to the mischievous 
crotchets of theorists at home, who want to set all clocks 
by Greenwich time, forgetting that it is morning in one 
part of the world at the time they are tolling the curfew 
in the other. 


* “The profits of cattle-farming are smaller than those of the 
sheep-owner (if the latter have good luck, for much depends upon 
that), but cattle-farming is much more safe as a speculation, and 
less care, knowledge, and management are required. £2000, laid 
out on 700 head of cattle, if good runs be procured, might increase 
the capital in five years from £2000 to £6000, besides enabling 
the owner to maintain himself, pay wages, &c.”— MS. letter /rent 
O. B. Wilkinsort. i 


11— 2d 


W 


338 


THE OAXTONS: 


CHAPTER II. 

London once more I How strange, lone, and savage 1 
feel in the streets I I am ashamed to have so much health 
and strength, when I look at those slim forms, stooping 
backs, and pale faces. I pick my way through the crowd 
with the merciful timidity of a good-natured giant. I am 
afraid of jostling against a man, for fear the collision 
should kill him. I get out of the way of a thread-paper 
clerk, and ’tis a wonder I am not run over by the 
omnibuses ; — I feel as if I could run over them I I per- 
ceive, too, that there is something outlandish, peregrinate, 
and lawless about me. Beau Brummell would certainly 
have denied me all pretensions to the simple air of a 
gentleman, for every third passenger turns back to look at 
me. I retreat to my hotel — send for bootmaker, hatter, 
tailor, and hair-cutter. I humanise myself from head to 
foot. Even Ulysses is obliged to have recourse to the 
arts of Minerva, and, to speak unmetaphorically, “smarten 
himself up,” before the faithful Penelope condescends to 
acknowledge him. 

The artificers promise all despatch. Meanwhile, I 
hasten to remake acquaintance with my mother country 
over files of the Times, Post, Chronicle, and Herald. 
Nothing comes amiss to me, but articles on Australia; 


A r AMILY PICTURE. 


339 


from those I turn aside with the true pshaw-supercilious • 
of your practical man. 

No more are leaders filled with praise and blame of 
Trevanion. “Percy’s spur is cold.” Lord Ulverstone 
figures only in the Court Circular^ or Fashionable 
Movements.'^ Lord Ulverstone entertains a royal duke 
at dinner, or dines in turn with a royal duke, or has come 
to town, or gone out of it. At most (faint ' Platonic 
reminiscence of the former life,) Lord Ulverstone says in 
the House of Lords a few words on some question, not a 
party one ; and on which (though affecting perhaps the 
interests of some few thousands, or millions, as the case 
may be) men speak without “ hears,” and are inaudible in 
the gallery ; or Lord Ulverstone takes the chair at an 
agricultural meeting, or returns thanks when his health is 
drunk at a dinner at Guildhall. But the daughter rises 
as the father sets, though over a very different kind of 
world. 

“ First ball of the season at Castleton House I ” Long 
description of the rooms and the company ; above all, 
the hostess. Lines on the Marchioness of Castleton’s 
picture in the “Book of Beauty,” by the Hon. Fitzroy 
Piddledum, beginning with “Art thou an angel from,” 
Ac. — a paragrapn that pleased me more, on “Lady 
Castleton’s Infant School at Raby Park ; ” then again — 
“ Lady Castleton, the new patroness at Almack’s ; ” a 
criticism more rapturous than ever gladdened living poet, 
on Lady Castleton’s superb diamond stomacher, just 
reset by Storr and Mortimer ; Westmacott’s bust of Lady 


340 


THE CAXTONS: 


Castletoii ; Landseer’s picture of Lady Castleton and hei 
children, in the costume of the olden time. Not a month 
in that long file of the Morning Post but what Lady 
Castleton shone forth from the rest of womankind — 

“ Velut inter ignes 

Luna minores.” 

The blood mounted to my cheek. Was it to this splendid 
constellation in the patrician heaven that my obscure, 
portionless youth had dared to lift its presumptuous 
eyes ? But what is this ? “ Indian Intelligence — Skilful 

retreat of the Sepoys under Captain de Caxton I ” A 
captain already — what is the date of the newspaper? — 
three months ago. The leading article quotes the name 
with high praise. Is there no leaven of envy amidst the 
joy at my heart? How obscure has been my career — 
how laurelless my poor battle with adverse fortune ! Fie, 
Pisistratus I I am ashamed of thee. Has this accursed 
Old World, with its feverish rivalries, diseased thee 
already ? Get thee home, quick, to the arms of thy 
mother, the embrace of thy father — hear Roland’s low 
blessing, that thou hast helped to minister to the very 
fame of that son. If thou wilt have ambition, take it, 
not soiled and foul with the mire of London. Let it 
spring fresh and hardy in the calm air of wisdom ; and 
fed, as with dews, by the loving charities of Home. 


A FAMILY PICTURE.' 


341 


CHAPTER III. 

It was at sunset that I stole through the ruined court- 
yard, having left my chaise at the foot of the hill below. 
Though they whom I came to seek knew that I had arrived 
in England, they did not, from my letter, expect me till 
the next day. I had stolen a march upon them ; and 
now, in spite of all the impatience which had urged me 
thither, I was afraid to enter — afraid to see the change 
more than ten years had made in those forms, for which, 
in my memory, Time had stood still. And Roland had, 
even when we parted, grown old before his time. Then, 
my father was in the meridian of life, now he had 
approached to the decline. And my mother, whom I 
remembered so fair, as if the freshness of her own heart 
had preserved the soft bloom to the cheek — I could not 
bear to think that she was no longer young. Blanche, 
too, whom I had left a child — Blanche, my constant 
correspondent during those long years of exile, in letters 
crossed and recrossed, with all the small details that make 
the eloquence of letter-writing, so that in those epistles I 
had seen her mind gradually grow up in harmony with 
the very characters; at first vague and infantine — then 
omewhat stiff with the first graces of running-hand, then 
ashing off, free and facile ; and, for the last year before 


342 


THE CAXTONS: 


I left, so formed, yet so airy — so regular, yet so uncon- 
scious of efl'ort — though, in truth, as the calligraphy had 
become thus matured, I had been half vexed and half 
pleased to perceive a certain reserve creeping over the 
stylo — wishes for my return less expressed from herself 
than as messages from others ; words of the old child-like 
familiarity repressed ; and “Dearest Sisty” abandoned for 
the cold form of “Dear Cousin.” Those letters, coming 
to me in a spot where maiden and love had been as myths 
of the by-gone, phantasms and eidola, only vouchsafed to 
the visions of fancy, had, by little and little, crept into 
secret corners of my heart ; and out of the wrecks of a 
former romance, solitude and reverie had gone far to build 
up the fairy domes of a romance yet to come. My 
mother’s letters had never omitted to make mention of 
Blanche — of her forethought and tender activity, of her 
warm heart and sweet temper — and, in many a little 
home picture, presented her image where I would fain 
have placed it, not “crystal seeing,” but joining my 
mother in charitable visits to the village, instructing the 
young, and tending on the old, or teaching herself to illu- 
minate, from an old missal in my father’s collection, that 
she might surprise my uncle with a new genealogical 
table, with all shields and quarterings, blazoned or sable 
and argent; or flitting round my father where he sat, and 
watching when he looked round for some book he was toe 
lazy to rise for. Blanche had made a new catalogue, and 
got it by heart, and knew at once from what corner of 
tlie Heraclea to summon the ghost. On all- these little 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


343 


traits had my mother been eulogistically minute; but 
somehow or other she had never said, at least for the last 
two years, whether Blanche was pretty or plain. That 
was a sad omission. I had longed just to ask that simple 
question, or to imply it delicately and diplomatically ; but 
I know not why, I never dared — for Blanche would have 
been sure to have read the letter, and what business was 
it of mine ? And if she was ugly, what question more 
awkward both to put and to answer? Now, in child- 
hood, Blanche had just one of those faces that might be- 
come very lovely in youth, and would yet quite justify the 
suspicion that it might become gryphonesque , witch-like 
and grim. Yes, Blanche, it is perfectly true 1 If those 
large, serious black eyes took a fierce light, instead of a 
tender — if that nose, which seemed then undecided 
whether to be straight or to be aquiline, arched off in tlie 
latter direction, and assumed the martial, Roman, and 
imperative character of Roland’s manly proboscis — if 
that face, in childhood too thin, left the blushes of youth 
to take refuge on two salient peaks by the temples (Cum- 
berland air, too, is famous for the growth of the cheek- 
bone I — if all that should happen, and it very well might, 
then, 0 Blanche, I wish thou hadst never written me 
those letters ; and I might have done wiser things than 
steel my heart so obdurately to pretty Ellen Bolding’s 
blue eyes and silk shoes. Now, combining together ah 
these doubts and apprehensions, wonder not, O reader, 
why I stole so stealthily through the ruined court-yard, 
crept round, to the other side of the tower, gazed wistfully 


344 


THE CAXTONS: 


on the sun setting slant, on the high casements, of the 
hall (too high, alas I to look within) and shrunk yet to 
enter ; — doing battle, as it were, with my heart. 

Steps I one’s sense of hearing grows so quick in the 
Bushland ! — steps, though as light as ever brushed the 
dew from the harebell I I crept under the shadow of the 
huge buttress mantled with ivy A form comes from the 
little door at an angle in the ruins — a woman’s form, Is 
it my mother ? It is too tall, and the step is more bound- 
ing. It winds round the building, it turns to look back, 
and a sweet voice, strange, yet familiar, calls, tender but 
chiding, to a truant that lags behind. Poor J uba ! he is 
trailing his long ears on the ground; he is evidently 
much disturbed in his mind ; now he stands still, his nose 
in the air. Poor Juba ! I left thee so slim and so nimble, 

“ Thy form that was fashioned as light as a fay’s, 

Has assumed a proportion more round ; ” 

years have sobered thee strangely, and made thee obese 
and Primmins-like. — They have taken too good care of 
thy creature comforts, O sensual Mauritanian ! still, in 
that mystic intelligence we call instinct, thou art chasing 
something that years have not swept from thy memory. 
Thou art deaf to thy lady’s voice, however tender and 
chiding. That’s right, come near — nearer — my cousin 
Blanche ; let me have a fair look at thee. Plague take 
the dog ! he flies off from her : he has found the scent, he 
is making up to the buttress I Now — pounce — he is 
caught ! — whining ungallant discontent. Shall I not 
yet see the face ! it is buried in Juba’s black curls 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 345 

Kisses too I Wicked Blanche 1 to waste on a dumb animal 
what, I heartily hope, many a good Christian would be 
exceedingly glad of! Juba struggles in vain, and is borne 
off I I don’t think that those eyes can have taken the fierce 
turn, and Roland’s eagle nose can never go with that 
voice, which has the coo of the dove. 

I leave my hiding-place, and steal after the Voice, and 
its owner. Where can she be going? Not far. She 
springs up the hill whereon the lords of the castle once 
administered justice, — that hill which commands the land 
far and wide, and from which can be last caught the 
glimpse of the westering sun. How gracefully still is that 
attitude of wistful repose I Into what delicate curves do 
form and drapery harmoniously flow 1 How softly distinct 
stands the lithe image against the purple hues of the sky I 
Then again comes the sweet voice, gay and carolling as 
a bird’s — now in snatches of song, now in playful appeals 
to that dull, four-footed friend. She is telling him some- 
thing that must make the black ears stand on end, for I 
just catch the words, “He is coming,” and “home.” 

I cannot see the sun set where I lurk in my ambush, 
amidst the brake and the ruins ; but I feel that the orb 
has passed from the landscape, in the fresher air of the 
twilight, in the deeper silence of eve. Lo ! Hesper cornea 
forth ; at his signal, star after star, come the hosts — 

“ Cb’eran con lui, quando I’amor divino, 

Mosse da prim^ quelle cose belle ! ” 

^ nd the sweet voice is hushed. 

Then slowly the watcher descends the hill on the op 


i46 


THE CAXTONS: 


posite side — the form escapes from my view. What 
charm has gone from the twilight ? See, again, where the 
step steals through the ruins and along the desolate 
court. Ah I deep and true heart, do I divine the remem- 
brance that leads thee ? I pass through the wicket, down 
the dell, skirt the laurels, and behold the face, looking up 
to the stars — the face which had nestled to my breast in 
the sorrow of parting, years, long years ago : on the grave 
where we had sat, I the boy, thou the infant — there, 0 
Blanche I is thy fair face — (fairer than the fondest dream 
that had gladdened my exile) — vouchsafed to my gaze I 
“ Blanche, my cousin 1 — again, again — soul with soul, 
amidst the dead I Look up, Blanche ; it is I.” 


CHAPTER lY. 

“ Go in first and prepare them, dear Blanche ; I will 
wait by the door. Leave it ajar, that I may see them.” 

Roland is leaning against the wall — old armor sus- 
pended over the grey head of the soldier. It is but a 
glance that I give to the dark cheek and high brow ; no 
change there for the worse — no new sign of decay 
Rather, if anything, Roland seems younger than when I 
left. Calm is the brow — no shame on it now, Roland ; 

and the lips, once so compressed, smile with ease no 

struggle now, Roland “not to complain.” A glance 
shows me all this. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


341 


“ Papae I ” says my father, and I hear the fall of a book, 
“I can’t read a line. He is coming to-morrow 1 — to- 
morrow I If we lived to the age of Methuselah, Kitty, 
we could never reconcile philosophy and man ; that is, if 
the poor man’s to be plagued with a good, affectionate 
son I ” 

And my father gets up and walks to and fro. One 
minute more, father — one minute more, — and I am on 
thy breast I Time, too, has dealt gently with thee, as he 
doth with those for whom the wild passions and keen 
cares of the world never sharpen his scythe. The broad 
front looks more broad, for the locks are more scanty 
and thin ; but still not a furrow. 

Whence comes that short sigh I 

“ What is really the time, Blanche ? Did you look at 
the turret clock ? Well, just go and look again.” 

“Kitty,” quoth my father, “you have not only asked 
what time it is thrice within the last ten minutes, but you 
have got my watch, and Rowland’s great chronometer, 
and the Dutch clock out of the kitchen, all before you, 
and they all concur in the same tale — to-day is not to- 
morrow.” 

“They are all wrong, I know,” said my mother, with 
mild ^rmness ; “ and they’ve never gone right since he 
kft. 

How comes out a letter — for I hear the rustle — and 
then a step glides towards the lamp ; and the dear, 
gentle, womanly face — fair still, fair ever for me, fair as 
jv'hen it bent over my pillow, in childhood’s first sickness, 


848 


THE CAXTONS: 


or when we threw flowers at each other on the lawn, at 
sunny noon I And now Blanche is whispering ; and now 
the flutter, the start, the cry— ‘‘It is true I it is true I 
Your arms, mother. Close, close round my neck, as in 
the old time Father, Roland, too 1 Oh, joy ! joy 1 joy I 
home again — home till death!” 


CHAPTER Y. 

From a dream of the Bushlaud, howling dingoes,* and 
the war-whoop of the wild men, I wake and see the sun 
shining in through the jasmine that Blanche herself has 
had trained round the window — old school-books, neatly 
ranged round the wall — fishing-rods, cricket-bats, foils, 
and the old-fashioned gun — and my mother seated by the 
bedside — and Juba whining and scratching to get up. 
Had I taken thy murmured blessing, my mother, for the 
whoop of the blacks, and Juba’s low whine for the howl 
of the dingoes ? 

Then what days of calm exquisite delight ! — the inter- 
change of heart with heart ; what walks with Roland, 
and tales of him once our shame, now our pride ; and the 
art with which the old man would lead those walks round 
by the village, that some favorite gossips might stop and 
ask, “ What news of his brave young honor ? ” 

I strive to engage my uncle in my projects for the 


• Dingoti — the name given by Australian natives to the wild dogs 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 345 

repair of the ruins — for the culture of those wide bogs 
and moorlands : why is it that he turns away and looks 
down embarrassed ? Ah, I guess I his true heir now is 
restored to him. He cannot consent that I should invest 
this dross, for which (the Great Book once publi&hed) I 
have no other use, in the house and the lands that will 
pass to his son. Neither would he suffer me so to invest 
even his son’s fortune, the bulk of which I still hold in 
trust for that son. True, in his career, my cousin may 
require to have his money always forthcoming. But /, 
who have no career — pooh I these scruples will rob me 
of half the pleasure my years of toil were to purchase. 
I must contrive it somehow or other ; what if he would 
let me house and moorland on a long improving lease ? 
Then, for the rest, there is a pretty little property to be 
sold close by, on which I can retire, when my cousin, as 
heir of the family, comes, perhaps with a wife, to reside 
at the Tower. I must consider of all this, and talk it 
over with Bolt, when my mind is at leisure from happiness 
to turn to such matters ; meanwhile, I fall back on my 
favorite proverb — ''Where there'^ a will there^s a way.^ 
What smiles and tears, and laughter and careless prattle 
with my mother, and roundabout questions from her, to 
know if I had never lost my heart in the Bush? and 
evasive answers from me, to punish her for not letting out 
that Blanche was so charming. “ I fancied Blanche had 
growm the image of her father, who has a fine martial 
head certainly, but not seen to advantage in petticoats 1 
How could you be so silent with a theme so attractive ? ” 
II.— .30 


350 


TflE CAXTONS: 


“Blanche made me promise.’’ 

Why, I wonder. Therewith I fell musing. 

What quiet delicious hours are spent with my father 
in his study, or by the pond, where he still feeds the 
carps, that have grown into Cyprinidian leviathans. The 
dnck, alas I has departed this life — the only victim that 
the Grim King has carried off ; so I mourn, but am 
resigned to that lenient composition of the great tribute 
to Nature. I am sorry to say the Great Book has 
advanced but slowly — by no means yet fit for publication, 
for it is resolved that it shall not come out as first pro- 
posed, a part at a time, but totnSy teres, atque rotundus. 
The matter has spread beyond its original compass ; no 
less than five volumes — and those of the amplest — will 
contain the History of Human Error. However, we are 
far in the fourth, and one must not hurry Minerva. 

My father is enchanted with Uncle Jack’s “noble con- 
duct,” as he calls it ; but he scolds me for taking the 
money, and doubts as to the propriety of returning it. 
In these matters my father is quite as Quixotical as 
Boland. I am forced to call in my mother as umpire 
between us, and she settles the matter at once by an 
appeal to feeling. “Ah, Austin ! do you not humble me, 
if you are too proud to accept what is due to you from 
my brother I ” 

‘^Velit, nolit, quod arnica,'’^ answered my father, taking 
off and rubbing his spectacles —“ which means, Kitty, 
that when a man’s married, he has no will of his own. 
To tuink,’' added Mr. Caxton, musingly, “that in tins 


A FAMILY PICrURE. 


351 


world one cannot be sure of the simplest mathematical 
definition I You see, Pisistratus, that the angles of a 
triangle so decidedly scalene as your Uncle Jack’s, may 
be equal to the angles of a right-angled triangle after 
alll” + 

The long privation of books has quite restored all my 
appetite for them. How much I have to pick up I — 
what a compendious scheme of reading I and my father 
chalk out 1 I see enough to fill up all the leisure of life. 
But, somehow or other, Greek and Latin stand still : 
nothing charms me like Italian. Blanche and I are read- 
ing Metastasio, to the great indignation of my father, whc. 
calls it “ rubbish,” and wants to substitute Dante. I have 
no associations at present with the souls 

“Che son content! 

Nel fuoco;” 

I am already one of the “ heaie gente.'' Yet, in spite o! 
Metastasio, Blanche and I are not so intimate as cousins 
ought to be. If we are by accident alone, I become as 
silent as a Turk — as formal as Sir Charles Grandison. 
I caught myself calling her Miss Blanche the other day. 

I must not forget thee, honest Squills I — nor thy delight 

* Not having again to advert to Uncle Jack, I may be pardoned 
for informing the reader, by way of annotation, that he continues 
to prosper surprisingly in Australia, though the Tibbets’ Wheal 
stands still for want of workmen. Despite of a few ups and downs, 
I have had no fear of his success until this year (1849), when 1 
tremble to think what effect the discovery of the gold-mines in 
California may have on his lively imagination. If thou escapest 
that snare. Uncle Jack, res age tutus eris — thou art safe for life I 


352 


THE CAXTONS: 


at my health and success ; nor thy exclamation of pride 
(one hand on my pulse and the other griping haz’d the 
“ball” of my arm), “ It all comes of my citrate of iron ; 
nothing like it for children ; it has an effect on the cerebral 
developments of hope and combativeness.” Nor can I 
wholly omit mention of poor Mrs. Primmins, who still 

calls me “ Master Sisty,” and is breaking her heart that 

$ 

I will not wear the new flannel waistcoats she had such 
pleasure in making — “ Young gentlemen just growing up 
are so apt to go off in a galloping ’sumption I ” “ She 

knew just such another as Master Sisty, when she lived at 
Torquay, who wasted away, and went out like a snuff, all 
because he would not wear flannel waistcoats.” There- 
with my mother looks grave, and says, “ One can’t take 
too much precaution.” 

Suddenly the whole neighborhood is thrown into com- 
motion. Trevanion — I beg his pardon. Lord Ulverstone 
— is coming to settle for good at Compton. Fifty hands 
are employed daily in putting the grounds into hasty 
order. Fourons, and waggons, and vans, have disgorged 
all the necessaries a great man requires, where he means 
to eat, drink, and sleep ; books, wines, pictures, furniture 
I recognise my old patron still. He is in earnest, what • 
ever he does. I meet my friend, his steward, who tells 
me that Lord Ulverstone finds his favorite seat, near 
London, too exposed to interruption ; and moreover, 
that, as he has there completed all improvements that 
wealth and energy can effect, he has less occupation for 
agricultural pursuits, to which he has grown more and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


35a 


more partial, than on the wide and princely domain which 
has hitherto wanted the master’s eye. . “ He is a bra’ 
farmer, I know,” quoth the steward, ‘‘ so far as the theory 
goes ; but I don’t think we in the north want great lords 
to teach us how to follow the pleugh.” The steward’s 
sense of dignity is hurt ; but he is an honest fellow, and 
really glad to see the family come to settle in the old 
place. 

They have arrived, and with them the Castletons, and 
a whole joosse comitatus of guests. The country paper is 
full of fine names. 

“ What on earth did Lord TJlverstone mean by pre- 
tending to get out of the way of troublesome visitors ? ” 

“ My dear Pisistratus,” answered my father to that ex- 
clamation, “it is not the visitors who come, but the 
visitors who stay away, that most trouble the repose of 
a retired minister. In all the procession, he sees but the 
images of Brutus and Cassius — that are 7iot there 1 
And depend on it, also, a retirement so near London did 
not make noise enough. You see, a retiring statesman is 
like that fine carp — the farther he leaps from the water, 
the greater splash he makes in falling into the weeds I 
But,” added Mr. Caxton, in a repentant tone, “this jest- 
ing does not become us ; and, if I indulged it, it is only 
because I am heartily glad that Trevanion is likely now 
to find out his true vocation. And as soon as the fine 
people he brings with him have left him alone in his 
library, I trust he will settle to that vocation, and be 
happier than he has been yet,” 

30* X 


354 


THE CAXTONS: 


“And that vocation, sir, is ?” 

“ Metaphysics I ” said my father. “ He will be quite at 
home in puzzling over Berkeley, and considering whether 
the Speaker’s chair, and the official red boxes, were really 
things whose ideas of figure, extension, and hardness, 
were all in the mind. It will be a great consolation to 
him to agree with Berkeley,, and ta find that he has only 
been baffied by immaterial phantasma I ” 

My father was quite right. The repining, subtle, truth- 
weighing Trevanion, plagued by his conscience into see- 
ing all sides of a question (for the least question has more 
than two sides, and is hexagonal at least,) was much more 
fitted to discover the origin of ideas than to convince 
Cabinets and Nations that two and two make four — a 
proposition on which he himself would have agreed with 
Abraham Tucker, where that most ingenious and sugges- 
tive of all English metaphysicians observes, “WeU per- 
suaded as I am that two and two make four, if I w'ere to 
meet with a person of credit, candor,, and understanding, 
who should sincerely call it in question, I would give him 
a hearing ; for I am not more certain of that than of the 
whole being greater than a part. And yet I could my- 
self suggest some considerations that might seem to con- 
trovert this poihV’ ^ I can so well imagine Trevanion 
listening to “ some person of credit, candor, and under- 
standing,” in disproof of that vulgar proposition that 

* Light of Nature — chapter on Judgment . — See the very ingenious 
illustration of doubt, “whether the part is always greater than thu 
whole” — taken from time, or rather eternity. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


355 


twice two make four I But the news of this arrival, 
including that of Lady Castleton, disturbed me greatly, 
and I took to long wanderings alone. In one of these 
rambles, they all called at the Tower — Lord and Lady 
Ulverstone, the Castletons and their children. I escaped 
the visit ; and on my return home, there was a certain 
delicacy respecting old associations that restrained much 
talk, before me, on so momentous an event. Roland, like 
me, had kept out of the way. Blanche, poor child, igno- 
rant of the antecedents, was the most communicative. 
And the especial theme she selected — was the grace and 
beauty of Lady Castleton 1 

A pressing invitation to spend some days at the castle 
bad been cordially given to all. It was accepted only by 
myself : I wrote word that I would come. 

Yes ; I longed to prove the strength of my own self- 
conquest, and accurately test the nature of the feelings 
that had disturbed me. That any sentiment which could 
be called love remained for Lady Castleton, the wife of 
another, and that other a man with So many claims od 
my affection as her lord, I held as a moral impossibility. 
But, with all those lively impressions of early youth still 
engraved on my heart — impressions of the image of 
Fanny Trevanion as the fairest and brightest of human 
beings — could I feel free to love again ? Could I seek 
to woo, and rivet to myself for ever the enth*e and virgin 
affections of another, while there was a possibility that I 
might compare and regret ? No ; either I must feel that, 
if Fanny were again single — could be mine without 


350 


THE OAXTONS: 


obstacle, human or divine — she had ceased to be the one 
1 would single out of the world ; or, though regarding 
love as the dead, I would be faithful to its memory and 
its ashes. My mother sighed, and looked fluttered and 
uneasy all the morning of the day on which I was to 
repair to Compton. She even seemed cross, for about 
the third time in her life, and paid no compliment to Mr. 
Stultz, when my shooting-jacket was exchanged for a 
black frock, which that artist had pronounced to be 
“ splendid ; ” neither did she honor me with any of those 
little attentions to the contents of my portmanteau, and 
the perfect “getting up” of my white waistcoats and 
cravats, which made her natural instincts on such memo- 
rable occasions. There was also a sort of querulous, 
pitying tenderness in her tone, when she spoke to Blanche, 
which was quite pathetic ; though, fortunately, its cause 
remained dark and impenetrable to the innocent compre- 
hension of one who could not see where the past filled 
the urns of the future at the fountain of life. My father 
understood me better, shook me by the hand as I got into 
the chaise, and muttered, out of Seneca — 

“ Non tanquam transfuga, sed tanquam explorator.” 

“Not to desert, but examine.** 


QuTe right. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


357 


CHAPTEK YI. 

Agreeably to the nsual custom in great houses, as 
soon as I arrived at Compton,. I was conducted to my 
room, to adjust my toilet, or compose my spirits by soli- 
tude : — it wanted an hour to dinner. I had not, how- 
ever, been thus left ten minutes, before the door opened, 
and Trevanion himself (as I would fain still call him) 
stood before me. Most cordial were his greeting and 
welcome ; and, seating himself by my side, he continued 
to converse, in his peculiar way — bluntly eloquent, and 
carelessly learned — till the half-hour bell rang. He 
talked on Australia, the Wakefield system — cattle — 
books, his trouble in arranging his library — his schemes 
for improving his property, and embellishing his grounds 
— his delight to find my father look so well — his deter- 
mination to see a great deal of him, whether his old 
college friend would or not. He talked, in short, of 
everything except politics, and his own past career — 
showing only his soreness in that silence. But (indepen- 
dently of the mere work of time) he looked yet more worn 
and jaded in his leisure than he had done in the full tide 
of Inisiness ; and his former abrupt quickness of manner 
now seemed to partake of feverish excitement. I hoped 
2w 


358 


THE CAXTONS: 


that my father would see much of him, for I felt that the 
weary mind wanted soothing. 

Just as the second bell rang, I entered the drawing- 
room. There were at least twenty guests present — each 
guest, no doubt, some planet of fashion or fame, with 
satellites of its own. But I saw only two forms distinct- 
ly ; first, Lord Castleton, conspicuous with star and 
garter — somewhat ampler and portlier in proportions, 
and with a frank dash of grey in the silky waves of his 
hair ; but still as pre-eminent as ever for that beauty — the 
charm of which depends less than any other upon youth 
— arising, as it does, from a felicitous combination of 
bearing and manner, and that exquisite suavity of expres- 
sion which steals into the heart, and pleases so much that 
it becomes a satisfaction to admire I Of Lord Castleton, 
indeed, it might be said, as of Alcibiades, “that he was 
beautiful at every age.” I felt my breath come thick, 
and a mist passed before my eyes, as Lord Castleton led 
me through the crowd, and the radiant vision of Fanny 
Trevanion, how altered — and how dazzling I — burst 
upon me. 

I felt the light touch of that hand of snow ; but no 
guilty thrill shot through my veins. I heard the voice, 
musical as ever — lower than it was once, and more sub 
dued in its key, but steadfast and untremulous — it was 
no longer the voice that made “ my soul plant itself in 
the ears.”* The event was over, and I knew that the 
dream had fled from the waking world for ever. 


* Sir Philip Sidney 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


359 


“Another old friend I as Lady TJlverstone came forth 
from a little group of children, leading one fine boy of 
nine years old, while one, two or three years younger, 
clung to her gown. “ Another old friend ! — and,” added 
Lady TJlverstone, after the first kind greetings, “two new 
ones when the old are gone.” The slight melancholy left 
the voice, as, after presenting to me the little viscount, she 
drew forward the more bashful Lord Albert, who indeed 
had something of his grandsire’s and namesake’s look of 
refined intelligence in his brow and eyes. 

The watchful tact of Lord Castleton was quick in ter- 
minating whatever embarrassment might belong to these 
introductions, as, leaning lightly on my arm, he drew me 
forward, and presented me to the guests more immediately 
in our neighborhood, who seemed by their earnest 
cordiality to have been already prepared for the intro- 
duction. 

Dinner was now announced, and I welcomed that sense 
of relief and segregation with which one settles into one’s 
own “particular” chair at your large miscellaneous 
entertainment. 

I stayed three days at that house. How truly had 
Trevanion said that Fanny would make “an excellent 
great lady. ” What perfect harmony between her manners 
and her position ; just retaining enough of the girl’s se- 
ductive gaiety and bewitching desire to please, to soften 
the new dignity of bearing she had unconsciously assumed 
— less, after all, as a great lady, than as wife and mother : 
wit)' a fine breeding, perhaps a little languid and artificial, 


360 


THE CAXTONS: 


as compared with her lord’s — which sprang, fresh and 
healthful, wholly from nature — but still so void of all the 
chill of condescension, or the subtle impertinence that be* 
longs to that order of the inferior noftZcssc, which beasts 
the name of “ exclusives ; ” with what grace, void of pru • 
dery, she took the adulation of the flatterers, turning from 
them to her children, or escaping lightly to Lord Castle- 
ton, with an ease that drew round her at once the protec- 
tion of hearth and home. 

And certainly Lady Castleton was more incontestably 
beautiful than Fanny Trevanion had been. 

All this I acknowledged, not with a sigh and a pang, 
but with a pure feeling of pride and delight. I might 
have loved madly and presumptuously, as boys will do ; 
but I had loved worthily — the love left no blush on my 
manhood ; and Fanny’s very happiness was my perfect 
and total cure of every wound in my heart not quite 
scarred over before. Had she been discontented, sorrow- 
ful, without joy in the ties she had formed, there might 
have been more danger that I should brood over the past, 
and regret the loss of its idol. Here there was none. 
And the very improvement in her beauty had so altered 
its character — so altered — that Fanny Trevanion and 
Lady Castleton seemed two persons. And, thus observ- 
ing and listening to her, I could now dispassionately per- 
ceive such differences in our nature as seemed to justify 
Trevanion’s assertion, which once struck me as so mon- 
strous, “ that we should not have been happy had fate 
permitted our union.” Pure-hearted and simple tliougu 


A FAMILY PICTURE, 


301 


Rhe remained in the artificial world, still that world was 
her element ; its interests occupied her ; its talk, though 
just chastened from scandal, flowed from her lips. To 
borrow the words of a man who was himself a courtier, 
and one so distinguished that he could afford to sneer at 
Chesterfield,* “ She had the routine of that style of con« 
versation which is a sort of gold leaf, that is a great em* 
bellishment where it is joined to anything else.” I will 
not add, “but makes a very poor figure by itself,” — for 
that Lady Castleton’s conversation certainly did not do — 
perhaps, indeed, because it was not “by itself” — and the 
gold leaf was all the better for being thin, since it could 
not cover even the surface of the sweet and amiable nature 
over which it was spread. Still this was not the mind in 
which now, in maturer experieime, I would seek to find 
sympathy with manly action, or companionship in the 
charms of intellectual leisure. 

There was about this same beautiful favorite of nature 
and fortune a certain helplessness, which had even its 
grace in that high station, and which, perhaps, tended to 
insure her domestic peace, for it served to attach her to 
those who had won influence over her, and was happily 
accompanied by a most affectionate disposition. But 
still, if less favored by circumstances, less sheltered from 
every wind that could visit her too roughly — if, as the 
wife of a man of inferior rank, she had failed of that high 
seat and silken canopy reserved for the spoiled darlings 
of fortune — that helplessness might have become queru- 


II.— 31 


Lord JIerve^’’t5 Memoirs of Georye 11. 


B02 


THE CAXTONS: 


lous. I thought of poor Ellen Bolding and her silken 
shoes. Fanny Trevanion seemed to have come into tho 
world with silk shoes — not to walk where there was a 
stone or a brier I I heard something, in the gossip of 
those around, that confirmed this view of Lady Castle- 
ton’s character, while it deepened my admiration of her 
lord, and showed me how wise had been her choice, and 
how resolutely he had prepared himself to vindicate his 
own. One evening as I was sitting, a little apart from 
the rest, with two men of the London world, to whose 
talk — for it ran upon the on-dits and anecdotes of a 
region long strange to me — I was a silent but amused 
listener ; one of the two said — “ Well, I don’t know any- 
w'here a more excellent creature than Lady Castleton ; so 
fond of her children — and her tone to Castleton so exactly 
what it ought to be — so affectionate, and yet, as it were, 
respectful. And the more credit to her, if, as they say, 
she was not in love with him when she married (to be 
sure, handsome as he is, he is twice her age) I And no 
woman could have been mere flattered and courted by 
Lotharios and lady-killers than Lady Castleton had been. 
I confess, to my shame, that Castletoii’s luck puzzles me, 
for it is rather an exception to my general experience. ” 

“ My dear * * said the other, who was one of those 
wise men of pleasure, who occasionally startle us into 
wondering how they come to be so clever, and yet rest 
contented with mere drawing-room celebrity — men who 
seem always idle, yet appear to have read everything ; 
ilvvays indifferent to what passes before them, yet who 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


363 


know tue character and divine the secrets of ererybodv 
— “ n7y dear * * said the gentleman, “ you would not 
l)e puzzled if you had studied Lord Castleton, instead of 
her ladyship. Of all the conquests ever made by Sedley 
Beaudesert, when the two fairest dames of the Faubourg 
are said to have fought for his smiles, in the Bois de 
Boulogne — no conquest ever cost him such pains, or so 
taxed his knowledge of women, as that of his wife after 
marriage I He was not satisfied with her hand, he was 
resolved to have her whole heart, ‘ one entire and perfect 
chrysolite;^ and he has succeeded I Never was husband 
so watchful, and so little jealous — never one who confided 
so generously in all that was best in his wife, yet was so 
alert in protecting and guarding her, wherever she was 
weakest I When, in the second year of marriage, that 
dangerous German Prince Yon Leibenfels attached him- 
self so perseveringly to Lady Castleton, and the scandal- 
mongers pricked up their ears, in hopes of a victim, I 
watched Castleton with as much interest as if I had been 
looking over Deschappelles playing at chess. You never 
saw anything so masterly : he pitted himself against his 
highness with the cool confidence, not of a blind spouse, 
but a fortunate rival. He surpassed him in the delicacy 
of Lis attentions, he outshone him by his careless magnifi- 
cence. Leibenfels had the impertinence to send Lady 
Castleton a bouquet of some rare flowers just in fashion. 
Castleton. an hour before, had filled her whole balcony 
with tne same costly exotics, as if they were too common 
for nosegays, and only just worthy to bloom for her a day 


564 


THE CAXTONS; 


Young and really accomplished as Leibenfels is, Castleton 
eclipsed him by his grace, and fooled him with his wit ; 
he laid little plots to turn his moustache and guitar into 
ridicule ; he seduced him into a hunt with the buckhounda 
(though Castleton himself had not hunted before, since' 
ho was thirty), and drew him, spluttering German oaths, 
out of the slough of a ditch ; he made him the laughter 
of the clubs : he put him fairly out of fashion — and all 
with such suavity and politeness, and bland sense of 
superiority, that it was the finest piece of high comedy 
you ever beheld. The poor prince, who had been cox-' 
comb enough to lay a bet with a Frenchman as to his 
success with the English in general, and Lady Castleton 
in particular, went away with a face as long as Don 

Quixote’s. If you had but seen him at S House, 

the night before he took leave of the island, and his 
comical grimace when Castleton offered him a pinch of 
the Beaudesert mixture I No : the fact is, that Castleton 
made it the object of his existence, the masterpiece of his 
art, to secure to himself a happy home, and the entire 
possession of his wife’s heart. . The first two or three 
years, I fear, cost him more trouble than any other man 
ever took, with his own wife at least ; but he may now 
rest in peace — Lady Castleton is won, and for ever.” 

As my gentleman ceased. Lord Castleton’s noble head 
rose above the group standing round him ; and I saw 
Lady Castleton turn with a look of well-bred fatigue 
from a handsome young fop, who had affected to lower 
his voice while he spoke to her, and, encountering the 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


365 


eyes of her husband, the look changed at once into one 
of such sweet smiling affection, such frank, unmistakable 
wife-like pride, that it seemed a response to the assertion 
— “ Lady Castleton is won, and for ever.” 

Yes, that story increased my admiration for Lord 
Castleton ; it showed me with what forethought and 
earnest sense of responsibility he had undertaken the 
charge of a life, the guidance of a character yet unde- 
veloped : it lastingly acquitted him of the levity that hod 
been attributed to Sedley Beaudesert. But I felt more 
than ever contented that the task had devolved on one 
whose temper and experience had so fitted him to 
discharge it. That German prince made me tremble from 
sympathy with the husband, and in a sort of relative 
shudder for myself I Had that episode happened to me, 
1 could never have drawn “high comedy” from it I — I 
could never have so happily closed the fifth act with a 
pinch of the Beaudesert mixture I No, no ; to my homely 
sense of man’s life and employment, there was nothing al- 
luring in the prospect of watching over the golden tree in 
the garden, with a “ woe to the Argus, if Mercury once 
lull him to sleep I ” Wife of mine shall need no watching, 
save in sickness and sorrow 1 Thank Heaven that my 
way of life does not lead through the roseate thorough- 
fares, beset with German princes laying bets for my per- 
dition, and fine gentlemen admiring the skill with which 
I play at chess for so terrible a stake I To each rank and 
each temper, its own laws. I acknowledge that Fanny is 
ar excellent marchioness, and Lord Castleton an incom- 
3J ♦ 


366 


THE CAXTONS: 


parable marquis. But, Blanche ! if I can win thy true, 
simple heart, I trust I shall begin at the fifth act of high 
Comedy, and say at the altar 

Once won, won for ever.” 


CHAPTER YII. 

I RODE home on a horse my host lent me ; and Lord 
Castleton rode part of the way with me, accompanied by 
his two boys, who bestrode manfully their Shetland ponies, 
and cantered on before us. I paid some compliment to 
the spirit and intelligence of these children — a compli- 
ment they well deserved. 

“ Why, yes,” said the marquis, with a father’s becoming 
pride, “ I hope neither of them will shame his grandsire, 
Trevanion. Albert (though not quite the wonder poor 
Lady TJlverstone declares him to be) is rather too pre- 
cocious ; and it is all I can do to prevent his being spoilt 
by flattery to his cleverness, which, I think, is m ach worse 
than even flattery to rank — a danger to which, despite 
Albert’s destined inheritance, the elder brother is more 
exposed. Eton soon takes out the conceit of the latter 

and more vulgar kind. I remember Lord (you know 

what an unpretending, good-natured fellow he is now) 
strutting into the play-ground, a raw boy, with his chin 
up in the air, and burly Dick Johnson (rather a tuft-hunter 
uow, I’m afraid) coming up, and saying, ‘ Well, sir, and 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


36 ? 


the deuce are you ? ^ ‘ Lord says the poor 

devil unconsciously, ‘eldest son of the Marquis of 

‘ Oh, indeed ! ’ cries Johnson ; ‘ then, there’s one kick for 
my lord, and two for the marquis I ’ I am not fond of 
kicking, but I doubt if anything ever did — — more good 
than those three kicks I But,” continued Lord Castleton, 
“ when one flatters a boy for his cleverness, even Eton 
itself cannot kick the conceit out of him. Let him be last 
in the form, and the greatest dunce ever flogged, there are 
always people to say that your public schools don’t do for 
your great geniuses. And it is ten to one but what the 
father is plagued into taking the boy home, and giving 
him a private tutor, who fixes him into a prig for ever. A 
coxcomb in dress,” said the marquis, smiling, “is a trifler 
it would ill become me to condemn, and I own that I 
would rather see a youth a fop than a sloven ; but a cox- 
comb in ideas — why, the younger he is, the more un- 
natural and disagreeable. Now, Albert, over that hedge, 
sir.” 

“ That hedge, papa ? The pony will never do it ” 

“ Then,” said Lord Castleton, taking off his hat with 
politeness, “ I fear you will deprive us of the pleasure of 
your company.” 

The boy laughed, and made gallantly for the hedge, 
though I saw by his change of color that it a little alarmed 
him. The pony could not clear the hedge ; but it was a 
pony of tact and resources, and it scrambled through like 
u cat, inflicting sundry rents and tears on a jacket of 
Raphael blue. 


368 


THE CAXTONS: 


liord Castleton said, smiling, “You see, I teach them 
to get through a difficulty one way or the other. Between 
you and me,” he added seriously, “I perceive a very dif- 
ferent world rising round the next generation from that 
in which I first went forth and took my pleasure. I shall 
rear my boys accordingly. Rich noblemen must now-a- 
days be useful men ; and if they ean^t leap over briers, 
they must scramble through them Don’t you agree with 
me ? ” 

“Yes, heartily.” 

“ Marriage makes a man much viser,” said the mar- 
quis, after a pause. “I smile now. to think how often I 
sighed at the thought of growing ‘ud. Now I reconcile 
myself to the grey hairs without ‘treams of a wig, and 
enjoy youth still — for,” pointing to his sons, “it is 
there ! ” 

“ He has very nearly found out tb»i secret of the saffron 
bag now,” said my father, pleased and rubbing his hands, 
when I repeated this talk with Lord Castleton. “ But I 
fear poor Trevanion,” he added, witEi a compassionate 
change of countenance, “is still far away from the sense 
of Lord Bacon’s receipt. And his wife, you say, out of 
very love for him, keeps always drawing discord from the 
one jarring wire.” 

“You must talk to her, sir.” 

“I will,” said my father, angrily; “and scold her too 
— foolish woman I I shall tell her Luther’s ad^icA ^ ^ 
Prince of Anhalt.” 


“ What was that, sir ? ” 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


369 


Only to throw a baby into the river Maldon, because 
it had suched dry five wet-nurses besides the mother, and 
must therefore be a changeling. Why, that ambition of 
hers would suck dry all the mother’s milk in the genua 
mammalian. And such a withered, rickety, malign little 
changeling too 1 She shall fling it into the river, by all 
that is holy I ” cried my father ; and, suiting the action 
to the word, away into the pond went the spectacles he 
had been rubbing indignantly for the last three minutes. 
“ Papas ! ” faltered my father, aghast, while the Ceprinidas, 
mistaking the dip of the Spectacles for an invitation to 
dinner, came scudding up ij the bank. “ It is all your 
fault,” said Mr. Caxton, recovering himself. “ Get me 
the new tortoise-shell spectacles and a large slice of bread. 
You see that when fish are rednoed to a pond they recog- 
nise a benefactor, which they never do when rising at flies, 
or groping for worms, in the waste world of a river. 
Hem 1 — a hint for the Ulverstoncs. Besides the bread 
and the spectacles, just look out and bring me the old 
black-letter copy of St. Anthony’s Sermon to Fishes,^^ 


CHAPTER YIII. 

Some weeks now have passed since my return to the 
Tower : the Castletons are gone, and all Trevanion’s gay 
guests. And since these departures, visits between the 
twe houses have been interchanged often, and the bonds 


Y 


370 


THE CAXTONS: 


of intimacy are growing close. Twice has my father held 
long conversations apart with Lady Ulverstone (my 
mother is not foolish enough to feel a pang now at such 
confidences), and the result has become apparent. Lady 
Ulverstone has ceased all talk against the world and the 
public — ceased to fret the galled pride of her husband 
with irritating sympathy. She has made herself the true 
partner of his present occupations, as she was of those 
in the past ; she takes interest in farming, and gardens, 
and flowers, and those philosophical peaches which come 
from trees academical that Sir William Temple reared in 
his graceful retirement. She does more — she sits by her 
husband’s side in the library, reads the books he reads,, 
or, if in Latin, coaxes him into construing them. Insen- 
sibly she leads him into studies farther and farther remote 
from Blue Books and Hansard ; and, taking my fathe* 
hint, 

“Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way.” 

They are inseparable. Darby-and- Joan-like, you see them 
together in the library, the garden, or the homely little 
pony-phaeton, for which Lord Ulverstone has resigned 
the fast-trotting cob, once identified with the eager looks 
of the busy Trevanion. It is most touching, most beauti- 
ful ! And to think what a victory over herself the proud 
woman must have obtained 1 — never a thought that 
seems to murmur, never a word to recall the ambitious 
man back from the philosophy into which his active mind 
flies for refuge. And with the effort, her brow has 
become so serene I That ciu’e-worn expression, which 


A FAMILY PICT URE. 3tl 

her fine features once wore, is fast vanisliing. And what 
affects Rie most, is to think that this change (which is 
already settling into happiness) has been wi ought by 
Austin’s counsels and appeals to her sense and affection. 
“ It is to you,” he said, “ that Trevanion must look foi 
more than comfort — for cheerfulness and satisfaction. 
Your child is gone from you — the world ebbs away — 
you two should be all in all to each other. Be so.” Thus, 
after paths so devious, meet those who had parted in 
youth, now on the verge of age. There, in the same 
scenes where Austin and Ellinor had first formed acquaint- 
ance, he, aiding her to soothe the wounds inflicted by the 
ambition that had separated their lots, and both taking 
counsel to insure the happiness of the rival she had 
preferred. 

After all this vexed public life of toil, and care, and 
ambition — to see Trevanion and Ellinor drawing closer 
and closer to each other, knowing private life and its 
charms for the first time — verily, it would have been a 
theme for an elegiast like Tibullus. 

But all this while a younger love, with no blurred 
leaves to erase from the chronicle, has been keeping sweet 
account of the summer time. “ Very near are two hearts 
that have no guile between them,” saith a proverb, traced 
back to Confucius. O ye days of still sunshine, reflected 
back from ourselves — O ye haunts, endeared evermore 
by a look, tone, or smile, or rapt silence ; when more and 
more with each hour unfolded before me, that nature, sc 
icnderly coy, so cheerful though serious, so attuned by 


372 


THE CAXTONS: 


eimple cares to affection, yet so filled, from soft musiiigs 
and solitude, with a poetry that gave grace to duties the 
homeliest — setting life’s trite things to music I Here 
nature and fortune concurred alike ; equal in birth and 
pretensions — similar iu tastes and in objects — loving the 
healthful activity of purpose, but content to find it around 
us — neither envying the wealthy nor vying with the 
great ; each framed by temper to look on the bright side 
of life, and find founts of delight, and green spots fresh 
with verdure, where eyes but accustomed to cities could 
see but the sands and the mirage : while afar (as man’s 
duty) I had gone through the travail that, in wrestling 
with fortune, gives pause to the heart to recover its losses, 
and know the value of love in its graver sense of life’s 
earnest realities ; Heaven had reared, at the thresholds 
of home, the young tree that should cover the roof with 
its blossoms, and embalm with its fragrance the daily air 
of my being. 

It had been the joint prayer of those kind ones I left, 
that such might be my reward ; and each had contributed, 
in his or her several way, to fit that fair life for the orna- 
ment and joy of the one that now asked to guard and to 
cherish it. From Roland came that deep, earnest honor 
— a man’s in its strength, and a woman’s in its delicate 
sense of refinement. From Roland, that quick taste for 
all things noble in poetry, and lovely in nature — the eye 
that sparkled to read how Bayard stood alone at the 
bridge, and saved an army — or wept over the page that 
'.old how the dying Sidney put the bowl from his burning 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


373 


lips. Is tliat too masculine a spirit for some ? Let each 
please himself. Give me the woman who can echo all 
thoughts that are noblest in men I And that eye, to 3 — 
like Roland’s — could pause to note each finer mesh in the 
wonderful webwork of beauty. No landscape to her waj^ 
the same yesterday and to-day — a deeper shade from the 
skies could change the face of the moors — the springing 
up of fresh wild flowers, the very song of some bird un- 
heard before, lent variety to the broad rugged heath. Is 
that too simple a source of pleasure for some to prize ? 
Be it so to those who need the keen stimulants that cities 
afford. But, if we were to jjass all our hours in those 
scenes, it was something to have the tastes which own no 
monotony in Nature. 

All this came from Roland ; and to this, with thought- 
ful wisdom, my father had added enough knowledge from 
books to make those tastes more attractive, and to lend 
to impulsive perception of beauty and goodness the cul- 
ture that draws finer essence from beauty, and expands 
the Good into the Better by heightening the sight of the 
survey ; hers, knowledge enough to sympathise with in- 
tellectual pursuits, not enough to dispute on man’s prov- 
ince — Opinion. Still, whether in nature or in lore, still 

“The fairest garden in her looks,- ^ 

And in her mind the choicest books!” 

And yet, thou wise Austin — and thou, Roland, poet that 
never wrote a verse — yet your work has been incomplete, 
but then Woman stepped in, and the mother gave to Ik.t 
she designed for a daughter the last finish of meek every- 


374 


THE C AXTONS : 


day charities — the mild household virtues — ” the soft 
word that turneth away wrath ” — the angelic pity for 
man’s rougher faults — the patience that bideth its time 

— and, exacting no “rights of woman,” subjugates us, 
delighted, to the invisible thrall. 

Dost thou remember, my Blanche, that soft summCi 
evening when the vows our eyes had long interchanged 
stole at last from the lip ? Wife mine I come to my side 

— look over me while I write: there, thy tears (happy 
tears are they not, Blanche ?) have blotted the page I 
Shall we tell the world more ?. Right, my Blanche ; no 
words should profane the place where those tears have 
fallen ! 

He ♦**:!«* 5|e 

And here I would fain conclude ; but alas, and alas I 
that I cannot associate with our hopes, on this side the 
grave, him who, we fondly hoped (even on the bridal-day, 
that gave his sister to my arms), would come to the 
hearth where his place now stood vacant, contented with 
glory, and fitted at last for the tranquil happiness which 
long years of repentance and trial had deserved. 

Within the first year of my marriage, and shortly aftei 
a gallant share in a desperate action, which had covered 
his name with new honors, just when we were most elated, 
in the blinded vanity of human pride, came the fatal 
news I The brief career was run. He died, as I kne n 
he would have prayed to die, at the close of a day ever 
inciiiorable in the annals of that marvellous empire, which 
va or without parallel has annexed to the Tlirone of the 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


375 


Isles. He died in the arms of Victory, and his last smile 
mot the eyes of the noble chief who, even in that hour^ 
could pause from the tide of triumph by the victim it hao 
cast on its bloody shore. ‘‘ One favor,” faltered the dying 
man ; “ I have a fathei at home — he, too, is a soldier. 
In my tent is my will : it gives all I have to him — he 
can take it without shame. That is not enough I Write 
to him — you — with your own hand, and tell him how 
his son fell I ” And the hero fulfilled the prayer, and 
that letter is dearer to Roland than all the long roll of 
the ancestral dead I Nature has reclaimed her rights, 
and the forefathers recede before the son. 

In a side chapel of the old Gothic church, amidst the 
mouldering tombs of those who fought at Acre and Agin- 
court, a fresh tablet records the death of Herbert de 
Caxton, with the simple inscription — 

HE FELL 'ON THE FIELD : 

HIS COUNTRY MOURNED HIM, 

AND HIS FATHER IS RESIGNED. 

Years have rolled away since that tablet was placed 
there, and changes have passed on that nook of earth 
which bounds our little world : fair chambers have sprung 
up midst the desolate ruins ; far and near, smiling corn- 
fields replace the bleak dreary moors. The land supports 
more retainers than ever thronged to the pennon of its 
barons of old ; and Roland can look from his Tower 
over domains that are reclaimed, year by year, from the 
waste, till the plough-share shall win a lordship mere 


376 


THE CAXTONS: 


opulent til an those feudal chiefs ever held by the tenure 
of the sword. And the hospitable mirth that had fled 
from the ruin has been renewed in the hall ; and rich and 
poor, great and lowly, have welcomed the rise of an 
ancient house from the dust of decay, iill those dreams 
of Roland’s youth are fulfdled ; but they do not gladden 
liis heart like the thought that his son, at the last, was 
worthy of his line, and the hope that no gulf shall yawn 
between the two when the Grand Circle is rounded, and 
man’s past and man’s future meet where Time disappears. 
Never was that lost one forgotten ! — never was his name 
breathed but tears rushed to the eyes ; and, each morn- 
ing, the peasant going to his labor might see Roland 
steal down the dell to the deep-set door of the chapel. 
None presume there to follow his steps, or intrude on his 
solemn thoughts ; for there, in sight of that tablet, are 
his orisons made, and the remembrance of the dead forms 
a part of the commune with heaven. But the old man’s 
step is still firm, and his brow still erect ; and you may 
see in his face that it was no hollow boast which pro- 
claimed that the “father was resigned:” and ye who 
doubt if too Roman a hardness might not be found in that 
Christian resignation, think what it is to have feared for 
a son the life of shame, and, ask then, if the sharpest 
grief to a father is in a son’s death of honor I 

Years have passed, and two fair daughters play at the 
knees of Blanche, or creep round the footstool of Austin, 
wjiiting patiently for the expected kiss when he looks up 
from the Great Book, now drawing fast to its close : or, 


4 

A FAMILY PICTURE. 377 

if lloland enter the room, forget all their sober deiture- 
ness, and, unawed by the terrible “ Papas I ” run clamorous 
for the promised swing in the orchard, or the fiftieth re- 
cital of “ Chevy Chase.” 

For my part, I take the goods the gods provide me, 
and am contented with girls that have the eyes of tludr 
mother ; but Roland, ungrateful man, begins to grumble 
that we are so neglectful of the rights of heirs-male. He 
is in doubt whether to lay the fault on Mr. Squills or on 
us : I am not sure that he does not think it a conspiracy 
of all three to settle the representation of the martial De 
Caxtons on the “spindle side.” Whosoever be the right 
person to blame, an omission so fatal to the straight line 
in the pedigree is rectified at last, and Mrs. Primmins 
again rushes, or rather rolls — in the movement natural 
to forms globular and spheral — into my father’s room, 
with — 

“ Sir, sir — it is a boy 1 ” 

Whether my father asked also this time that question 
so puzzling to metaphysical inquirers, “ What is a boy ? ” 
I know not ; I rather suspect he had not leisure for so 
abstract a question ; for the whole household burst on him, 
and my mother, in that storm peculiar to the elements of 
the Mind Feminine — a sort of sunshiny storm between 
laughter and crying — whirled him off to behold the 
Neogilos. 

Now, some months after that date, on a winter’s eve- 
aing, we were all assembled in the hall, which was still 
our usual apartment, since its size permitted to each bin 
32 * 


3T8 


THE OAXTONS: 


own segregated and peculiar employment. A large screen 
fenced off from interruption my father’s erudite settlement ; 
and quite out of sight; behind that impermeable barrier, 
he was now calmly winding up that eloquent peroration 
which will astonish the world, whenever, by Heaven’s 
special mercy, the printer’s devils have done with “The 
History of Human Error.” In another nook my uncle 
had ensconced himself — stirring his coffee (in the cup my 
mother had presented to him so many years ago, and 
which had miraculously escaped all the ills the race of 
crockery is heir to), a volume of Ivanhoe in the other 
hand ; and despite the charm of the Northern Wizard, his 
eye not on the page. On the wall, behind him, hangs 
the picture of Sir Herbert He Caxton, the soldier-comrade 
of Sidney and Drake ; and, at the foot of the picture, 
Roland has slung his son’s sword beside the letter that 
spoke of his death, which is framed and glazed : sword 
and letter had become as the last, nor least honored, 
Penates of the hall : — the son was grown an ancestor. 

Not far from my uncle sat Mr. Squills, employed in 
mapping out phrenological divisions on a cast he had made 

from the skull of one of the Australian aborigines a 

ghastly present which (in compliance with a yearly letter 
to that effect) I had brought him over, together with a 
stuffed “wombat” and a large bundle of sarsaparilla. 
For the satisfaction of his patients, I may observe, pa- 
renthetically, that the skull and the “ wombat ” — that 
last is a creature between a miniature pig and a very 
small badger — were not precisely packed up with the 


A. FAMILY PICTURE. 


379 


sarsaparilla I) Farther on stood open, but idle, the new 
pianoforte, at which, before my father had given his pre- 
paratory hem, and sat down to the Great Book, Blanche 
and my mother had been trying hard to teach me to bear 
the third in the glee of “ The Chough and Crow to roost 
have gone,” — vain task, in spite of all flattering assu- 
rances that I have a very fine “ bass,” if I could but 
manage to humor it. Fortunately for the ears of the 
audience, that attempt is now abandoned. My mother is 
hard' at work on her tapestry — the last pattern in fashion 

— to wit, a rosy-cheeked young troubadour playing the 
lute under a salmon-colored balcony : the two little girls 
look gravely on, prematurely in love, I suspect, with the 
troubadour ; and Blanche and I have stolen away into a 
corner, which, by some strange delusion, we consider out 
of sight, and in that corner is the cradle of the Neogilos. 
Indeed, it is not our fault that it is there — Roland would 
have it so ; and the baby is so good, too, he never cries 

— at least so say Blanche and my mother : at all events, 
he does not cry to-night. And, indeed, that child is a 
wonder ! He seems to know and respond to what was 
uppermost at our hearts when he was born ; and yet more, 
when Roland (contrary, I dare say, to all custom) per- 
mitted neither mother, nor nurse, nor creature of woman- 
kind, to hold him at the baptismal font, but bent over the 
new Christian his own dark, high-featured face, reminding 
one of the eagle that hid the infant in its nest, and 
watched over it with wings that had battled with the 
storm : and from that moment the child, who took the 


380 


THE CAXTONS: 


name of Herbert, seemed to recognise Roland belter 
than his nurse, or even mother — seemed to know that, 
in giving him that name, we sought to give Roland his 
son once more 1 Never did the old man come near the 
infant but it smiled, and crowed, and stretched out iU 
little arms ; and then the mother and I would press each 
other’s hand secretly, and were not jealous. Well, then, 
Blanche and Pisistratus were seated near the cradle, and 
talking in low whispers, when my father pushed aside the 
screen, and said — 

“ There — the work is done 1 — and now it may go to 
press as soon as you will.” 

Congratulations poured in — my father bore them with 
his usual equanimity ; and standing on the hearth, his 
hand in his waistcoat, he said, musingly, “Among the 
last delusions of Human Error, I have had to notice 
Rousseau’s phantasy of Perpetual Peace, and all the like 
pastoral dreams, which preceded the bloodiest wars that 
have convulsed the earth for more than a thousand 
years I ” 

“ And to judge by the newspapers,” said I, “ the same 
delusions are renewed again. Benevolent theorists go 
about prophesying peace as a positive certainty, deduced 
from that sibyl-book the ledger ; and we are never again 
to buy cannons, provided only we can exchange cotton 
for corn.” 

Mr. Squills (who having almost wholly retired from 
general business, has, from want of something better to 
do, attended sundrv “Demonstrations in the North,’’ 


A FAMILY nOTURE 


381 


since which he has talked much about the march of im- 
provement, the spirit of the age, and “ us of the nine- 
teenth century”). — I heartily hope that those benevolent 
theorists are true prophets. I have found, in the course 
of my professional practice, that men go out of the world 
quite fast enough, without hacking them into pieces, or 
blowing them up into the air. War is a great evil. 

Blanche (passing by Squills, and glancing towards 
Roland). — Hush ! 

Roland remains silent. 

Mr. Caxton. — War is a great evil ; but evil is admit- 
ted by Providence into the agency of creation, physical 
and moral. The existence of evil has puzzled wiser 
heads than ours. Squills. But, no doubt, there is One 
above who has His reasons for it. The combative bump 
seems as common to the human skull as the philoprogeni- 
tive, — if it is in our organization, be sure it is not there 
without cause. Neither is it just to man, nor wisely sub- 
missive to the Disposer of all events, to suppose that war 
is wholly and wantonly produced by human crimes and 
follies — that it conduces only to ill, and does not as often 
arise from the necessities interwoven in the framework of 
society, and speed the great ends of the human race, con- 
formably with the designs of the Omniscient. Not one 
great war has ever desolated the earth, but has left be^ 
hind it seeds that have ripened into blessings incalcu- 
lable I 

Mr. Squills (with the groan of a dissentient at s 
‘Demonstration”). — OJi! oh! ohI 


THE CAXTONS: 


S8?. 

Luckless Squills I Little could he have foreseen the 
shower-bath, or rather douche, of erudition that for 
splash on his head, as he pulled the string with that im- 
pertinent Oh! oh! Down first came the Persian War 
with Median myriads disgorging all the rivers they had 
drunk up in their march through the East — all the arts, 
all the letters, all the sciences, all the notions of liberty 
that we inherit from Greece — my father rushed on with 
them all, sousing Squills with his proofs that, without the 
Persian War, Greece would never have risen to be the 
teacher of the world. Before the gasping victim could 
take breath, down came Hun, Goth, and Vandal, on Italy 
aud Squills. 

“What, sir I” cried my father, “don’t you see that 
from those eruptions on demoralised Rome came the re- 
generation of manhood ; the re-baptism of earth from the 
last soils of paganism ; and the remote origin of what- 
ever of Christianity yet exists, free from the idolatries 
with which Rome contaminated the faith ? ” 

Squills held up his hands and made a splutter. Down 
came Charlemagne — paladins and all ! There my father 
was grand I What a picture he made of the broken, 
jarring, savage elements of barbaric society. And the 
iron hand of the great Frank — settling the nations and 
founding existent Europe. Squills was now fast sinking 
into coma, or stupefaction ; but, catching at a straw, as 
he heard the word 

“ Crusades,” he stuttered forth, “Ah I there I defy you.” 

“Defy me there I” cries my father: and one would 


A FAMILY PICTURE. SS'A 

think the ocean was in the shower-bath, it came down 
with such a rattle. My father scarcely touched on the 
smaller points in excuse for the Crusades, though he re* 
cited very volubly all the humaner arts introduced int 
Europe by that invasion of the East ; and showed how 
it had served civilisation, by the vent it afforded for tlie 
rude energies of chivalry — by the element of destruction 
to feudal tyranny that it introduced — by its use in the 
emancipation of burghs, and the disrupture of serfdom. 
But he painted, in colors vivid, as if caught from the 
skies of the East, the great spread of Mahometanism, 
and the danger it menaced to Christian Europe — and 
drew up the Godfreys, and Tancreds, and Richards, as a 
league of the Age and Necessity, against the terrible 
progress of the sword and the Koran. “You call them 
madmen,” cried my father, “but the frenzy of nations is 
the statesmanship of fate I How know you that — but 
for the terror inspired by the hosts who marched to Jeru- 
salem — how know you that the Crescent had not waved 
over other realms than those which Roderic lost to the 
Moor ? If Christianity had been less a passion, and the 
passion had less stirred up all Europe — how know you 
that the creed of the Arab (which was then, too, a pas- 
sion) might not have planted its mosques in the forum of 
Rome, and on the site of Notre Dame ? For in the war 
between creeds — when the creeds are embraced by vast 
races — think you that the reason of sages can cope with 
the passion of millions ? Enthnsiasra must oppose en- 
thusiasm. The crusader fought for the tomb of Cb .-’st, 
but he saved the life of Christendom.” 


384 


THE CAXTONS: 


My father paused. Squills was quite passive ; he strug- 
gled no more — he was drowned. 

“So,” resumed Mr. Caxton, more quietly — “so, if 
later wars yet perplex us as to the good that the All-wise 
One draws from their evils, our posterity may read their 
uses as clearly as we now read the finger of Providence 
resting on the barrows of Marathon, or guiding Peter the 
Hermit to the battle-fields of Palestine. Nor, while wc 
admit the evil to the passing generation, can we deny that 
many of the virtues that make the ornament and vitality 
of peace sprung up first in the convulsion of war ! ” Here 
Squills began to evince faint signs of resuscitation, when 
my father let fly at him one of those numberless water- 
works which his prodigious memory kept in constant 
supply. “Hence,” said he, “hence, not unjustly, has it 
been remarked by a philosopher, shrewd at least in worldly 
experience” — (Squills again closed his eyes, and became 
exanimate) — “ it is strange to imagine that war, which 
of all things appears the most savage, should be the pas- 
sion of the most heroic spirits. But ’tis in war that the 
knot of fellowship is closest drawn ; ’tis in war that 
mutual succor is most given — mutual danger run, and 
common affection most exerted and employed ; for heroism 
and philanthropy are almost one and the same ! ” * 

My father ceased, and mused a little. Squills, if still 
living, thought it prudent to feign continued extinction. 

“Not,” said Mr. Caxton, resuming — “not but what I 
hold it our duty never to foster into a passion what we 


* Shaftesbury. 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


385 


must rather submit to as an awful necessity. You say 
truly, Mr. Squills — war is an evil ; and woe to those who, 
on slight pretences, open the gates of Janus, 

‘ The dire abode, 

And the fierce issues of the furious god.’ ” 

Mr. Squills, after a long pause — employed in some of 
I he more handy means for the reanimation of submerged 
bodies, supporting himself close to the fire in a semi-erect 
posture, with gentle friction, self-applied, to each several 
limb, and copious recourse to certain steaming stimulants 
which my compassionate hands prepared for him — 
stretches himself, and says feebly, “ In short, then, not to 
provoke farther discussion, you would go to war in defence 
of your country. Stop, sir — stop, for Heaven’s sake I 
I agree with you — I agree with you I But, fortunately, 
there is little chance now that any new Boney will build 
boats at Boulogne to invade us.” 

Mr. Caxton. — I am not so sure of that, Mr. Squills. 
(Squills falls back with a glassy stare of deprecating 
horror.) I don’t read the newspapers very often, but the 
past helps me to judge of the present. 

Therewith my father earnestly recommended to Mr. 
Squills the careful perusal of certain passages in Thucy- 
dides, just previous to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian 
war (Squills hastily nodded the most servile acquiescence,) 
and drew an ingenious parallel between the signs and 
symptoms foreboding that outbreak, ^and the very apore- 
hension of coming war which was evinced by the recent 

II —33 


z 


THE CAXTONS: 


lo pceans to peace.* And, after sundry notable am; 
shrewd remarks, tending to show where elements for VA'^ar 
were already ripening, amidst clashing opinions and dis- 
organised states, he wound up with saying — “So that, 
all things considered, I think we had better just keep up 
enough of the bellicose spirit, not to think it a sin if we 
are called upon to fight for our pestles and mortars, our 
three-per-cents, goods, chattels, and liberties. Such a 
time must come, sooner or later, even though the whole 
world were spinning cotton, and printing sprigged calicoes. 
We may not see it. Squills, but that young gentleman in 
the cradle, whom you have lately brought into light, 
may.*^ 

“And if so,’’ said my uncle abruptly, speaking for the 
first time — “ if indeed it be for altar and hearth 1 ” My 
father suddenly drew in and pished a little, for he saw 
that he was caught in the web of his own eloquence. 

Then Roland took down from the wall his son’s sword 
Stealing to the cradle, he laid it in its sheath by the 
infant’s side, and glanced from my father to us with a 
beseeching eye. Instinctively Blanche bent over the 
cradle, as if to prote^^t the Neoailos; but the child, 
waking, turned from her. and attracted by the glitter of 

* When this work was first published, Mr. Caxton was generally 
doomed a very false prophet in these anticipations, and sundry 
ci-itics were pleased to consider his apology for war neither 
seasonable nor philosophical. That Mr. Caxton was right, and 
the politicians opposed to him have been somewhat ludicrously 
wrong, may be briefly accounted for — Mr. Caxton had read history 


A FAMILY PICTURE. 


381 


the hilt, laid one hand lustily thereon, and pointed with 
the other, laughingly, to Roland. 

“ Only on my father’s proviso,” said I, hesitatingly 
“ For hearth and altar — nothing less I ” 

“And even in that case,” said my father, “ add the 
shield to the sword ! ” and on the other side of the infant 
he placed Roland’s well-worn Bible, blistered in many a 
page with secret tears. 

There we all stood, grouping round the young centre 
of so many hopes and fears — in peace or in war, born 
alike for the Battle of Life. And he, unconscious of all 
that made our lips silent, and our eyes dim, had already 
left that bright bauble of the sword, and thrown both 
arms round Roland’s bended neck. 

“ Herbert / ” murmured Roland ; and Blanche gentlj 
drew away the sword — and left the Bible. 






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